Pursuing graduate study of spectacled fruit bats in Queensland, Australia, Annabel Mendelssohn spends her free time picking leeches from her eyes, discovering waterfalls, and writing to her sister, Alice, whose life, by contrast, is domestic and settled. Aside from occasional fears that loggers will terrorize her camp, all is going according to plan; that is until Annabel's mentor, Professor John Goode, suddenly disappears. Haunted by the ambiguous circumstances surrounding her own brother's death two years earlier, Annabel becomes determined to find her missing professor-but she is not alone in her search. Leon, Professor Goode's son, has left his teaching job in a Boston museum to conduct his own rescue efforts. Soon Annabel and Leon cross paths and together, in the vibrant and unruly rain forest, they try to unravel the mystery of the professor's disappearance. As their search progresses, they soon come to realize that sometimes the truth reveals itself in more ways than one.