Two sisters growing together and apart into their emerging selves, one pulsing with curiosity and risk, the other watchful, all eyes and ears. Immersed in the heat and colours of 1960s Hong Kong, shimmering between sea and sky, this is a world of fishermen and plotting insurgents, temple gods and ghosts, of blinding light and dark, dark waters. Frankie is a tearaway, putting out for boys and men in a defiant attempt to win her parents’ attention. An ordinary teenager in many ways, in an extraordinary setting: the threat of communist China bubbles at the borders and the carnage in Vietnam that calls her father back time and again, like a moth to a flame. While Frankie’s behaviour becomes ever more outrageous, her reticent sister, Kate, retreats into a quiet desperation. When she does act, she endangers all to save just one soul – Frankie’s.
