A child's vision of events when she was about six and living in Botswana, the daughter of an Englishwoman and a Motswana. Her father takes a job as accountant at the salt mine of the new township of Jamestown, while her mother Rose is unable to get a job and grudgingly sets about housekeeping with pretty basic amenities. The book concerns the family's eventually disastrous friendship with a white couple, Shaun and Christine Fish. It is an account of a child's vision and sense of identity, combined with her insights into white behaviour and expectations, and her evocation of the past.