Vienna, 1903: Thirty-three-year-old Marta Mueller, natural historian and talented artist, meets Bernard Schmidt, a copra planter from German East Neuguinea (now Papua New Guinea) who is looking for a wife. For Marta, who longs to travel the world, Bernard is a window of opportunity and a chance to start anew. A few months later Marta is married and sailing for the Pacific. Her new husband's friends are a strange group: Australians, Samoans, Europeans and natives mix uneasily and unconventionally in the hot, humid, and unstable environment of German-ruled Neuguinea. Marta must find her feet, and herself, far away from her family during her marriage and, later, the British-Australian conquest and formation of Papua New Guinea. Eventually, Marta finds a real, if unconventional love, and achieves greater success in her artistic and scientific work than she might ever have dreamed.