Jones' novel takes place In Bougainville in the civil war in the early 1990s, when regular schooling for village children is disrupted. Elderly eccentric Mr Watts, the last white man in the area, agrees to become the teacher. His classes consist of reading Dickens's Great Expectations to the kids. Government troops (known contemptuously as "redskins") and the local boys who have become armed rebels (known as "rambos") pass through the village, sometimes with scary or horrible results. Still Mr Watts reads. And, in spite of everything, the children are touched and begin to see new imaginative poss-ibilities in their lives. They relate to the orphaned status of Dickens's Pip and to the theme of being uprooted from home. They begin to see characters such as Joe Gargery, Miss Havisham and Mr Jaggers in terms of their own culture.