Alice Roland, together with her children, boxes, mattresses and piano, is punted up river to the 'appalling isolation' of their new home, 'a small house against a splendid wall of bush' in the kauri forest at Pukekaroro. She is joining her husband there, a reunion that is far from warm, but this remote place is to mark Alice's long and steady growth towards shared love, a new awareness of life and a sense of personal liberation.