This romance opens in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, in September 1965. The story weaves between a small Salisbury shop, an old Rhodesian gold mine, and the precarious career of a teenage fashion model in London. After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965, many of the characters who appeared in "Squares in a Grooved Circle" are drawn together again but, as the country braces itself to counteract the threat of retaliation from Britain, they are only concerned with U.D.I. inasmuch as it affects their own lives, loves and ambitions. However, when one of their group goes missing in Southern Rhodesia, they all become involved in the ensuing search.