Camille Pascal, a young French nurse comes to South Africa with her father and her small daughter, Zara, during the closing years of the apartheid regime. The family settles amongst a wine-growing community in the Western Cape where they become involved in the lives of victims of the system. Interwoven with Camille's story is that of Jake Coleman, a painter with an international reputation, a deep-seated fear of failure, and a complicated private life. One Tongue Singing explores some of the different faces of power, both in the ways it operates between individuals and in societies.