A novel about risk and freedom, desire and love in pioneering New Zealand. Tomatoes were little known in New Zealand in the late nineteenth century, but those who had encountered the fruit often called it the 'love apple' and considered it a symbol of love and lust. Anglo-Irish gentleman photographer Geoffrey Hastings is in danger of confusing the two as he agonizes over the past. Huia, the hoydenish, part-Maori sixteen-year-old, knows just how to use lust for her own ends. The orphan PJ, meanwhile, follows any chance of love wherever it might take him. Like Geoffrey, he arrives in New Zealand from Ireland, but unlike the older man PJ has Fenian sympathies and pines to right the wrongs of his native land. Their shared heritage is one of conflict, but can they forget the past in this new country?