Toss lives on a sheep farm with her father in New Zealand. When Toss's father dies in an accident, Ethan, an itinerant hunter, wanders onto the family farm and is given a job by her grandfather. Toss's fairly innocent relationship with Ethan is severed when he forms a relationship with her mother.

In 1860s New Zealand, a young Irish woman desperately trying to find her son finds herself caught on both sides of the lines during the wars between Māori tribes and the British colonial army.

Malfred Signal leaves her life of stifling gentility as an art teacher in a South Island private girls' school and decides to live out her dream – painting alone in the remote North. One terrifying night, beset by a prowler, but confronting only her own image at every step, she relives her past.

In an Arctic village in 1931, British mapmaker Walter Russell selects 12-year-old Eskimo Avik as his guide. When the boy contracts tuberculosis, Walter flies him to a Montreal hospital, where Avik meets Albertine and is infatuated. A decade later, a grown Avik encounters Albertine again in London, where he's serving as a British combat pilot. Despite her relationship with Walter, she and Avik begin an affair.