Frances is an unmarried Londoner newly landed in colonial Aotearoa at the dawn of the First Taranaki War. Once well-regarded, her family's impressive fall from grace sees them seeking their fortune in a raw, new country and struggling to learn the strange etiquette of settler life. When Frances comes face-to-face with Henry White, the man who mysteriously broke her heart a decade earlier, he's standing outside Thorpe's General Store with a sack of flour in his arms. Henry is married now, to the proud and hardy Mataria, who is shunned by her whanau because of events in her past. Conflict between settlers and iwi rises,and both women must find the courage to fight for what is right, even if it costs them everything they know. As their lives intersect in surprising and catastrophic ways, the question remains – will they ever belong, or do their fates lie in the uncomfortable space between?