Late one day, two white women arrive by boat at a jungle village in the rainforest of Peru. They want to stay, to study agriculture and babies, but Alicia wonders why they have come so far from their homes, from their parents and husbands and children.
And these "old ladies" are so ignorant. They don't share food, they don't know what it takes to make a healthy baby, they don't even realise that lying is something you need to practise. When an Isabo woman is working, she is planting a garden, or weaving cloth, or cooking food, but these old ladies just read books and talk and ask questions.
Yet in one year, Alicia's life changes and she builds a friendship that links one heart with another.
Joan Abelove takes readers inside the lives of people from an Amazonian culture and reflects a view of ourselves through very different eyes.