Usha, an Indian girl is forced to marry a much older man whom she doesn't love. His subsequent death seems a liberation, but she faces a widow's burning, her life will end in the flames of her dead husband's funeral pyre. Refusing to submit to her condition, Usha flees India for Africa, with hopes of finding the father who has abandoned her. A tragic drama, Paul Haston's critically acclaimed novel is set against a backdrop of 19th century Indian Indenture: the shipment of Indians to work on the white-owned sugar plantations in Natal.