Gerda, having run away from divorce and tragedy in Canada, has washed up in a foetid room in the poorest sector of Acre, Israel. Her only friend is an itinerant Arab house-painter and his motherless little ‘half-and-half’.These two unlikely people, and a new way of life she finds through them, offer her an escape from the morass of loneliness, drink and despair she has fallen into.A story of unlooked-for love and rehabilitation in an alien land.