Briony West has grown up in the shadow of her father - an impressive man whose past as a missionary in Rhodesia has always been a mystery to her. But one day she discovers the secret that has haunted him for years - whilst in Africa, he fathered a son by an African woman. Matthew is now a young man and, despite his missionary education and light skin, he and his mother are part of a population controlled by a European colonial society. Shocked by the conditions she imagines her half-brother to face, in 1939 Briony decides to travel to Africa with the hope of advancing him in the world. But her arrival coincides with political unrest and she soon finds that her hopes for reconciliation are hanging by a thread in the midst of a country torn apart by war.