Anne, a woman in her 30s, is bringing home the body of her missionary father, David, who has died suddenly in Nigeria. She has decided to take the long way home, by container ship, to help her come to terms with his death. What she has not reckoned with though is that she gets involved both with two stowaways (clandestinely) and the ship's mate (sexually) and that the journey will end in murder. Nor, for that matter, that reading her father's diaries will reveal that she has an illegitimate sibling, whose fate her father was seeking when he died and whom she too must attempt to find in order to make peace with herself. In 'The Voyage Home', Jane Rogers takes important contemporary themes such as immigration and colonialism, and uses them as a basis for a profound and page-turning novel.