Photojournalist Frances Woodward is heartbroken over self-obsessed Benedict Hunt who has just become engaged to another after toying with her affections. She abandons her restrictive life in Victorian London for Auckland, New Zealand. Unfortunately she sells one of her erotic photographs of her friend Dolly to the wrong person, an action which later comes back to haunt her when she travels to the small village of Tauranga to stay in the controlled chaos of the Bleakley home, where the couples marriage is crumbling apart. A slow-moving tale of what life in the colonies at that time may have been like for a skilled photographer such as Frances. More development of some of the side characters would have been worthwhile. Interesting descriptive passages and some amusing dialogue, especially between Frances and the children. Good research into how Tauranga would have been in that time period. ( )