When the diffident and ineffectual Derek Mann loses his teaching job in a girls' grammar school and drifts from one temporary post to another, one of his precocious pupils gives him her grandfather's wartime diary with a mission to return to Apartheid South Africa and find the opal mine she believes to be her rightful inheritance. Intrigue and violence bedevil the quest, which ends in a desert under the Southern Cross. The wry, often laconic style gives full reign to the characters' latent sexuality. Author Bio: Humphrey Muller, once a professor of English in South Africa during the Apartheid years, moved to Scotland to devote more time to creative writing. He has since written a number of novels: A Twist in Time, the Cage and the Cross, Wheel of Fortune, Continental Drift, and with his wife Carolyn has co-authored two novels: Rapture at Sea and Spirit of Ecstasy by 'Carolyn Charles'.