In this fine collection of poems and drawings Cilla McQueen traces the lives and voyages of her ancestors, and the living history of her husband's people. She herself travels through the fire that destroys her home at Otakou, the autoclave of the central poem, tying together the separate threads of her journey and moving from one harbor to another. The sea is a constant element and balancing this are the poet's precisely observed images of domestic life and her fascination with the forms and inhabitants of the land.