This is a magnificent and deeply moving story about two girls, a life-long friendship, and the heart's search for the real true thing. A careful, gentle, deeply passionate novel about how a young love, undeclared and unfulfilled, both blights and blesses an entire lifetime, and generations beyond. This story, which begins in rural Australia in 1959 but reaches into the past and the future. When Ruth and Fee finish school, they each must make a choice. Ruth's grandmother wants her to go to university and to see every marvellous place in the world. Fee wants to stay and be a mother. But for Ruth, leaving town means leaving Tam Finn, the elusive yet entrancing boy so unlike any other she has ever met.