Southern Africa, 1865. A mixed-race woman living in the arid Karoo takes in a lost white child and raises him as her own. Nine years later, the boy is removed and forced to live in the Knysna Forest with a family of woodcutters who claim that he is theirs. Separated by law and geography, Fiela and Benjamin spend a decade trying to find each other while simultaneously coming to terms with their individual identities.