Disillusioned with professional life, Rosie, a doctor, unexpectedly inherits a shack on the northern tip of New Zealand's Great Barrier Island and decides it's time to begin anew. She arrives at her home to find she has two neighbors sharing the wilderness -- Red O'Hara, traumatized by horrific wartime experiences working an the Burma railway as a P.O.W. of the Japanese, and Angus McLeod, a retired policeman, who has fled from a society he has as soft and contemptible. Rosie's sudden appearance panics Red and Angus. Both of them fear she will disrupt their neatly ordered lives. And they're right.

Tough, smart, and practical, Rosie soon turn the lives of Red and Angus upside down. And as they work out their relationship, an unexpected threat draws them closer together: the depredations of a big Japanese trawler threaten to destroy their food supply and their environment. As they go to sea in a desperate attempt to prevent the rape of their island paradise, this extraordinary novel of survival and love moves toward a blazing finale reminiscent of another classic: "The African Queen."