When Dorothea ' Tea' Gray joins the Land Service and is sent to work on a remote farm in the golden plains of North Otago, she hadn't thought beyond filling the empty shoes of her twin brother, who has left to serve in the Second World War.

But Tea finds more than hard work and hot sun in the dusty North Otago nowhere - she finds a magic inside herself she never could have imagined, a way to save her brother in a distant land she never thought she could reach, and a love she never knew existed.