Her mother dead from a drug overdose, 13-year-old Olivia is rescued by Cathie Tulloch, her mother's friend throughout the years they were held captive in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in WWII. Welcomed into the Tulloch's remote family home in the Australian tropics, introverted Olivia is claimed by dramatic, generous, controlling Cassandra Tulloch as her sister and best friend. Moving to the UK at 18, Olivia finds her independence, and partner Ben. But in 1970, after five years away, she is homesick, and ready to fulfill her long-held dream: to make a family of her own. In Brisbane, she and Ben share a hippie lifestyle with Cassandra and husband, Sebastian. But while earth-mother Cassandra effortlessly produces beautiful babies, for Olivia, becoming a mother is hard. Even harder is discovering the truth about her own mother. And when the unimaginable happens, destroying the friendship with Cassandra that has been her bedrock for so long, Olivia tells herself that she doesn't deserve a family, nor a place to call home.
