Carew portrays a country in which the echoes of slavery still disturb, with seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between its diverse cultural inheritances, and which is struggling to feel at home in a world where nature, away from the coastal strip and the city, appears inhospitable and wild. 

These are the challenges that confront Hector Bradshaw when, as a sickly child, he is sent away to the remote village of Tarlogie. Here he receives an education that he struggles to fit together: the dry colonial education of the tragic Teacher La Rose; the moral precepts of his kindly guardian, Sister Smart; the harsh African vision of the old hunter Doorne; and the sexual education he receives from Elsa. Above all, for a sickly city boy, there is the challenge of wild nature, disturbingly red in tooth and claw.