Freddie Ottaway breaks all the rules of the British Colonial Service by falling in love with a beautiful native girl, Amala Mohammed. As colonial Kenya drifts slowly into disorder during the Mau-Mau insurgency, the authorities decide to move him on. But the consequences are tragic. Half a century later his nephew Edward, a failed London city dealer, stumbles into the real story of what happened all those years before. As he does so, he learns more about himself than he dreamed possible, as well as unearthing a shocking secret buried in the tiny north country community where he washes up one dark day in February. Behind it all lurks the comic-macabre figure of Malinov, KGB agent turned Russian oligarch. A story of love, honour and belief, and the endless search for direction that being human entails.