There is nothing more hurtful than hope.
A young girl in the Andamans somehow survives against all the odds in the years immediately prior to independence. Her brother does not: he is executed, a woman prisoner is simply written out of existence, indigenous peoples are treated abysmally, and there are those who learn the art of looking away so that they do not see what they are not meant to see. British and Japanese brutality contrast with the islands' beauty in this tale of how the girl ultimately finds her place in the world beside a childhood friend.