Welsey Cunningham grew up running barefoot through the orchards of his Quaker family farm, working with horses and dreaming of one day building himself a house on his own patch of ground above the river. The Second World War interrupted those dreams: it took Wes to New Guinea as a medic, and then sent him home with healing bullet wounds in his legs. While Wes was away, life in Almond Tree continued; but everyone's been changed by the war. None more so than Beth Hardy - his headstrong, fiercely intelligent and beautiful neighbour. As Wes begins again to construct the peaceful life he's always wanted, Beth sets herself on a very different path, committing herself to the Communist Party and all it stands for. Their dreams and desires may be at odds, but there is something they don't yet know. Wes and Beth need each other, desperately: neither will be able to survive what life has in store without the other.