It was relatively common in the days before mass relocation to find solitary Asian traders living and conducting business in the heart of white rural communities. Isolated because of their racial and cultural differences, they built walls around themselves - surviving like bits of flotsam in the hostile sea, practising their religion and conducting their daily routine as inconspicuously as possible.' Sisters Yasmin and Meena, their parents and grandmother are among those who live behind the walls, helpless to control their destinies in the arid years of apartheid, but not entirely without hope...Yasmin's strivings bring her some of what she wants in life, but not without tragedy compounded by long-concealed secrets that seem to be passed from other to daughter. In this sensitively written novel Farida Karodia explores the complex relationships between mothers and daughters and the peripheral role of principled, hard-working father whose only fault is his futile optimism.