When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
adultery
secret love
beach
jealousy
love triangle
isolation
culture clash
sexuality
arranged marriage
strangeness
violent husband
new zealand
maori
settler
wilderness
mute
pianist
playing piano
woman director
sign languages
piano
19th century
severed finger
mother daughter relationship