A holidaying writer becomes entranced by the story of two great New Zealand eccentrics. First there is Franklin Bodmin, self-taught genius and inventor of the crinkled hairpin and the first modern carburettor, who became an entrepreneur in America, living out the dreams of success of an entire generation. Growing up in Invercargill, in the shadow of this superhero father, Will Bodmin chooses a different path, travelling to England to become an unorthodox Jungian art therapist and one of the greatest ever collectors of documents and works of art relating to the South Pacific. Drawn into archival byways and the intricacies of family lore, our author finds himself retracing Will's search for the elusive 19th-century pamphlet that would make his collection complete. From one man's obsessive accumulation of objects and knowledge emerges a meditation on both the human conviction that life, in spite of its irrational moments, can be deciphered, and on a young nation's obsession with its past.