The novel opens with Rupert Pengelly, the central character who is a fighter pilot during the Second World War, blowing up an Italian goods train. At the end of the war, Rupert loses his ancestral home in Kent, for reasons of death duties and the deceit of a distant cousin, George Geake.  With the loss of his home and because of a promise he made to a fellow Second World War pilot, and friend, Rupert travels to Rhodesia to look for his friend's young daughter, Sasa, recently orphaned.  And so Rupert's life in Africa begins.