Barriers and traps erected in the mind are more pernicious than brick walls. Torn from his parents' fairy-garden by the Blitz, Ben is dragged through childhood horrors, ending up in the New World. It turns out to be more of the same. Sadistic members of a religious order, debilitating family battles, being punched and kicked to near death in the US south, driven into the deep dungeons of his mind by officious school administrators, and then destroyed by his wife, Ben finally buries himself in a decrepit "fixer-upper" on the Sunshine Coast. Out of that misery comes a light that draws him to Crescent Beach: his new-found love and a healing garden.