Hone Hohepa is a man of two worlds Pakeha and Maori. As a young boy, he is sent far away from his family to live and study abroad in Australia with the promise that he will inherit his uncles' fortune. Discontent, isolated, and alienated from his father's culture he returns to New Zealand as a young man and joins Tītokowaru's rebels fighting against the crown. Aisling is a young Irish immigrant who fled the colonization of her home country only to be trapped in a loveless marriage. When her husband joins the colonial forces to fight the rebellion she is left to defend their farm with only a few servants to help. Caught up in events much larger than themselves these tewo lost souls are at first thrown together by circumstance