In the time after World War II when the Hawaiian islands were still blanketed with fields of sugar cane and pineapple, the myriad of ethnic races living in plantation camps have only just begun to inter-marry in greater numbers. In the midst of these turbulent times on the island of Maui, a hapa-haole family struggles with their infidelities, ambitions, and passions as a child learns about betrayal, a young war bride struggles to fit into the rigid plantation system, and the past continues to haunt the present. With long-held social and political norms about to crash around them and their way of life disappear forever, the people of the Hawaiian sugar plantations struggle to preserve what matters most.