Nell and Fen leave the Mumbanyo tribe and meet anthropologist Andrew Bankson at a Christmas Eve party.

Andrew persuades Nell and Fen to accompany him by canoe toward Nengai, promising provisions and nearby tribes to study.

Andrew tends to Nell's wounds on their first night together, and the two talk until exhausted.

Andrew settles Nell and Fen at Lake Tam so Nell can study the Tam tribe while he studies the nearby Kiona.

Andrew returns to Lake Tam after seven weeks apart and collapses to the ground in a faint.

Nell nurses a delirious Andrew through a fever in the marital bed she shares with Fen.

Fen pitches Andrew a plan to steal a sacred object and sell it to a museum to eclipse Nell's academic fame.

Andrew, Nell, and Fen collaborate overnight and create the Grid system for charting tribal and personal temperaments.

Fen announces that Nell is pregnant with his child, leaving Andrew feeling devastated and inadequate.

Fen steals Andrew's canoe and sets off secretly with Xambun to find the sacred flute.

With Fen away on his expedition, Nell and Andrew grow close and make love for the first time.

Fen returns to the Tam carrying the stolen sacred flute and the body of the slain Xambun.

Andrew insists all three anthropologists must leave Lake Tam immediately after Xambun's death and the theft of the flute.

An acquaintance in Sydney tells Andrew that Nell hemorrhaged to death at sea and Fen buried her body overboard.

Andrew visits the American Museum of Natural History and recognizes Nell's button sewn into a Tam death mask.

Anthropologists Nell Stone and her husband Fen are fleeing a violent tribe when they encounter the lonely Andrew Bankson, who invites them to study the peaceful Tam tribe at Lake Tam. As Andrew falls in love with Nell and she grows to depend on him emotionally, Fen secretly plots to steal a sacred tribal artifact and sell it to a museum to eclipse his wife's fame. The three collaborate to create a revolutionary system called the Grid before Fen departs on his dangerous solo expedition and Nell and Andrew begin an affair. Fen returns carrying the stolen flute and the body of a slain tribesman, forcing the group to abandon the Tam and flee. Nell dies from a hemorrhage at sea and Fen buries her overboard, leaving Andrew devastated for the rest of his life. Decades later, Andrew discovers a remnant of Nell sewn into a museum display, and the grief of losing her remains as sharp as ever.

The central story of three anthropologists, a love triangle, and a fatal expedition.

Andrew attempts to drown himself by weighing his pockets with stones before a group of laughing Kiona natives rescues him.

Fen tells Andrew on the canoe that the entire New Guinea fieldwork is funded entirely by Nell's grant money.

Nell explains to Andrew how she and Fen fell in love after meeting on a ship returning from the Solomons.

Nell befriends the enthusiastic Tam children and begins learning the Tam language to conduct her fieldwork.

Nell receives a letter from her former lover Helen Benjamin warning that she will always love more in her relationship with Fen.

Nell's hoped-for pregnancy turns out to be a false alarm, deepening the emotional strain in her marriage to Fen.

Nell assists at Tam woman Sali's difficult childbirth, but the newborn baby later starves to death.

Andrew deliberately avoids visiting Lake Tam until Nell sends him a note through Teket announcing that Xambun has returned.

Xambun returns to the Tam tribe bearing fresh lash scars on his back, wearing his miner's uniform, and speaking English.

Fen comes home stoned from the parade celebrating Xambun's return and violently throws Nell's typewriter off her desk.

Andrew, Nell, and Fen read Helen Benjamin's anthropology manuscript over tea and Andrew silently connects the Dobu tribe to Fen's character.

Nell confesses to Andrew that Fen refuses to help her approach Xambun for an account of his time in the mines.

The Tam tribe demand the sacred flute be buried with Xambun's body to keep his spirit from troubling them.

Fen and Nell fight in Sydney and Andrew confronts Fen directly about his violence toward his wife.

Andrew publishes the Grid theory under all three names in an academic journal, but the Nazis later adopt it for their racial program.

The story is shaped by events that precede and surround the central love triangle, beginning with Andrew's suicidal despair before he ever meets Nell and Fen. Nell works to integrate herself with the Tam tribe while managing a deteriorating marriage, enduring a painful false pregnancy, and suppressing her growing feelings for Andrew. The traumatic return of Xambun, a tribesman who survived indentured labor in the mines, triggers a wave of domestic violence from Fen, who destroys Nell's typewriter and refuses to let her conduct interviews. The three anthropologists read a colleague's manuscript together and discuss the nature of anthropology while Nell privately struggles to reach Xambun before Fen can exploit him. When Fen refuses to honor the tribe's wish to bury the sacred flute with Xambun, the fallout follows the group to Sydney, where violence between Fen and Nell erupts again. Andrew ultimately publishes the Grid theory under all three names, but its adoption by the Nazis becomes a lasting source of sorrow.

The surrounding events and relationships that shape the story's central tragedy.

Andrew confesses to Nell his grief over his brothers' deaths and his financial dependence on his overbearing mother.

Nell reveals to Andrew her deep personal aversion to the Mumbanyo's practices and admits she alone forced the departure.

Andrew gives Nell his late brother Martin's spectacles to replace the pair Fen had broken.

Andrew reads Nell's book 'The Children of the Kirakira' and feels an overwhelming urge to cross Lake Tam to find her.

Fen reveals during his bedside vigil that he and his brothers sexually abused his sister growing up on an isolated Queensland farm.

Fen kisses Andrew on the mouth during a bedside visit and steps back behaving as though Andrew had initiated it.

Nell writes in her notebook that both she and Fen are already a little in love with Andrew Bankson.

Andrew spots Xambun at a Tam ceremony and senses the man has been hollowed out and profoundly changed by his time away.

Andrew overhears Nell and Fen arguing about him in the night and Nell begs Andrew not to leave the following day.

Nell visits the women's road and the Tam women initiate her into their sexual practices, which she later shares with Andrew.

Andrew quietly tells Nell he would follow her to New York, but Fen returns before she can give her answer.

Andrew asks Nell to run away with him in Sydney; she kisses him and says she loves him but refuses.

Fen tells Andrew in his hotel room that Xambun was killed because he was seen, while Fen himself remained hidden.

Nell writes in her final notebook entry that she plans to disembark and return to Sydney to find Andrew.

Andrew returns to England and reunites with his aged mother after learning of Nell's death at sea.

The novel's emotional turning points begin with Andrew and Nell's first intimate conversations, in which they confide family secrets and discover an extraordinary mutual understanding. Andrew's recovery from a fever forces all three characters into unprecedented closeness, during which Fen makes disturbing confessions and commits an act of aggression that foreshadows his later violence. As Nell's bond with Andrew deepens, she records in her private notebooks the feelings she cannot openly express, while both sense the possibility of an entirely different life together. Fen's announcement of Nell's pregnancy and his secret departure with Xambun mark the point of no return for all three characters. In Sydney, the love triangle reaches its crisis: Andrew asks Nell to flee with him, she refuses despite confessing her love, and Fen reveals the brutal truth about what really happened to Xambun. Nell's final notebook entry, in which she resolves to return to Andrew, comes too late, as she dies before they can ever be reunited.

The revelations, decisions, and emotional turning points that drive the characters toward their fates.