The year is 1984 and the British Empire is still intact.

Peta Firth, a bookish district officer in the remote Kyinwe district of Burma, is bored and lonely and longs for friendship and a meeting of minds. After a riot devastates the town, Captain Henrietta de Carnac and her detachment of cavalry troopers are sent to enforce civil order.

Peta is drawn to this mysteriously aloof figure, who causes offence by commandeering the Government Secondary School playing fields for her polo practice and by declining invitations to dinner with the District Commissioner and his wife. Sent to read the Riot Act by her superior, Peta is given short shrift and temporarily finds herself on the side of the Henrietta-haters.

Join Peta and Henrietta on their journey towards friendship and understanding in a relationship that defies the rigid class-bound strictures of colonial society, one that risks everything for the promise of a brief period of happiness.