When Anna Fielder sees an Asian man selling pens in the city square, she keeps her distance. After all, as he father says, "What with the Triads and so on, there's a lot of evil out there, you just don't know who people are." Anna, raw and displaced, in an unfamiliar city, is beginning to uncover the difficult facts of her family history. Kam Sy, the quill seller, has come to New Zealand from Laos to escape his own turbulent personal and political past.
What Anna learns about her family is not what she expects. As she is drawn into Kam Sy's world, she makes further unexpected discoveries - about the cost of misunderstandings and misplaced idealism.
