New Zealand, 1943. Violet Trench crosses Lake Rotorua with a small boy, Wing Lee, but rows back alone.Twenty years later, the same body of water is the scene of an event that will have lasting repercussions for Violet and her employees at the café she now runs on the lake shore. The lives of these young people will diverge, their paths to independence taking them as far apart as Cambodia and the USA, but Violet's influence will continue to mark both those who leave and those who stay behind.