Jean Costain is the young wife of a British intelligence officer garrisoned in Rangoon during the 2nd World War. The Japanese bombing of the city in 1942 finds British forces unprepared for war, and they soon fall back into northern Burma. Deprived of their protection, half a million members of the unpopular Indian community set out on the thousand-mile journey back to India. Unable to leave Burma by conventional routes Jean joins the exodus, along with her beautiful Indian maid and the maid's 11-year old daughter. They travel by jeep, by paddle-steamer and on foot through one of the hottest and most inhospitable jungles in the world, facing hunger, disease, hostile Burmans, gangs of deserters - and the Japanese. They mix with the exhausted British troops engaged in the longest fighting retreat of their history. As she tries to guide her little party out of Burma, Jean discovers much about her own resourcefulness, her attitudes to race and class, and her capacity for love.