Trapped in a loveless marriage, filled with nostalgia for a simpler, joyful time, Stephen Sagar leaves eagerly for Trinidad when he is commissioned by a powerful island politician to write his biography. The politician - a despot who has buttressed himself in an old plantation - ignores him at first, but Stephen is befriended by servants who show him a side of island life he'd chosen to forget. Then, as he explores the lush landscape, he runs into a woman who once loved him, and in her need to love again, his own longing begins to evolve and intensify.