Olivia is writing from a Tahitian jail, piecing together her troubled past and her family's buried history for the daughter she gave up for adoption years before. The search for her own father, a pilot missing since the Korean War, has brought her to the South Seas and landed her behind bars. In the stillness of her cell, Olivia ponders the meaning of the secret journals she discovered after her mother's death. Their author is her ancestor Frank Henderson, a British naval officer who, as a young man, came to these same waters a hundred years before. What unfolds are twin tales of drama spanning the globe and history, reaching back through the murky waters of Olivia's family line and culminating on the island where she is now held captive.