The body of a seventeen-year-old girl has been found covered in wildflowers in the Drakensberg Mountains, near Durban. She is the daughter of a Zulu chief, destined to fetch a high bride price.

Jacob's Rest, a tiny town on the border between South Africa and Mozambique, 1952. An Afrikaner police officer is found dead. Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman, begins investigating the murder following a trail of clues...