A Canadian couple moves to Rio de Janeiro, each partner on a separate quest. Todd Austen is a committed environmentalist, fighting to save the lands of an Amazon tribe threatened by a sinister mining conglomerate. Holly Austen is a painter obsessed by the great voyage of Charles Darwin, who once lived only miles from her crumbling Rio house. She is also the caring mother of two young sons who finds herself constantly struggling for balance - that great ecological ideal - which also motivates her pre-occupied and increasingly endangered husband.