His mother dead, his father digging for gold, six-year-old PS has grown up wrapped warmly in the love of his Aunt Lila and Uncle George - honest, working class, open-hearted. But this world of security and simple pleasures is shattered upon the arrival home to Australia of Lila's sister Vanessa, raised in opulence in London, and determined to make PS her own child.
Based on his own childhood, Sumner Lock Elliott's first novel looks with tenderness and irony at the games adults play against each other, and at those who are caught in the middle.