Nell, born into a new century and forged in the freedoms of the high country, yearns for a life that transcends the confines of family expectation.
She grows up riding horseback through the foothills of New Zealand's Southern Alps, and each autumn makes the long trek down country to the winter house. Nell plays her part volunteering during WW1 and the 1920 pandemic. She tests the lively waters of the burgeoning Theosophical society in Dunedin, there meeting a lifelong friend Peggy. There is a seduction, and a romance before she meets Herb. Home from the world war, he has taken up a piece of unproductive land under the soldier settlement scheme.
Newly married, Herb and Nell move into Herb's whare, a mud hut where only a perpetually burning fire can keep the winter cold at bay. Especially when the fog arrives and hoar frost sprouts from every surface, every twig and fence post. Nell soon falls pregnant, but all is not well as the birth approaches.
With a legacy from Nell's father, they buy a Maniototo sheep station flanking Mt Kyeburn and the Dansey's Pass. Nell bears five children. Herb is an uneasy farmer and feels the weight of keeping the farm solvent through the vicissitudes of the Depression, then a second world war.
Nell has vowed to keep alive the flame of her inner freedom ? a freedom that is tested, by husband Herb's pride and the demands of family life. Herb betrays her trust. Love comes calling and must be reckoned with. There is tragedy..
Two wars, a pandemic and the Depression ensure that Nell cannot escape society's matrix. Is it even possible for a woman of Nell's era to hold her own?
Nell dares to step beyond bounds; revels and stumbles in love; knows the perils of life in a female body, and of motherhood; as she embraces the consolations of friendship and seeks a worldview that can hold it all.
Speaking of the experience of writing a novel of her grandmother's life, Todd says: "I expected gaps and guesswork, but instead found a presence and a life, vivid and corporeal, that unfolded scene by scene."
