Set in Wellington in the early twentieth century and spans the years 1905 to 1922. For most people in the wider community, the area known as Haining Street has an infamous reputation in the city, allegedly full of opium dens, weird food, gambling and strange Chinese cultural practices. Nice Europeans stay away. But for the tiny number of Wellington Chinese, it is a safe haven, a refuge from the scarcely believable and often violent anti-Chinese racism which pervades the wider Wellington community. It's the setting for an unlikely love story. Katherine is a lonely European widow struggling to support her children. Yung is a young Chinese man who runs a vegetable shop. We also learn he has a wife back in China. At first tentative, their love affair is conducted in secret, away from the daylight. Later, they grow in confidence. But in this climate how can a European woman have a successful relationship with a Chinese man? But when Katherine's son, Robbie, learns the truth, on the eve of World War I as young men everywhere are swept up on a tide of macho patriotism, he takes his family's honour into his own hands - with devastating consequences.