In the winter of 1954, in a construction camp for a hydroelectric dam in the remote Tasmanian highlands, three-year-old Sonja Buloh lived with her Slovenian immigrant parents. One night, Sonja's mother Maria walked off into a blizzard, never to return-leaving Sonja with a father who drinks too much to quiet the ghosts of World War II. Thirty-five years later, Sonja has returned to Tasmania to make peace with a past that intrudes ever more forcefully into her present. As their story unfolds, it will transform forever Sonja's guarded, empty existence and her father's living death. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is about the rough lives of laborers in a young country; about the barbarism of the old world left behind; about people apparently without hope, seeking redemption and healing through love.