From the cover of the Virago edition:

'No man, dead or alive, can disturb the plot in the wild garden of myself where art grows, although mine is a self-sown personality, an enclosure of wilful wanton weeds, there is yet one dell of order. I am a flower reaching beyond the restraining grasses. I am a Little One piling up a tall tower in the doorway. I am a teacher cleaving a track though the undergrowth...'

This is the story of Anna, spinster and genius, teacher of little Maori children in a remote New Zealand town. A passionate woman, uncertain and gauche in her relations with men, she is at peace only in her schoolroom, where she struggles to create the works which will set her beloved children free.

For it is love which is the subject of this novel - Anna's for her dancing, playful bunch of 'Little Ones', black and white; and the men, whose fascination and concern for the irresistible Anna erupts into her passionately defended solitude.

This is a magnificent portrait of a pioneer and artist struggling against orthodoxy, of a woman coming to terms with her complicated self. Sylvia Ashton-Warner's first novel, it brought its author instant fame and recognition when first published in 1958.