"... I saw its great bulk heaving itself out of the sand that spilled from its spars like water, the screaming wind slicing it free from the grip of the hill, its broken shape like the belly of a dinosaur ... I crawled slowly towards it, eyes clenched shut against the storm, until its form enveloped me ..."

While searching for the wreck of a Portuguese ship in the sandhills of the southern coast of New South Wales, archaeologist David Norfolk stumbles upon the body of a man murdered fifty years before.

In a shack nearby an old man lies dying. He too knows something of the ship, and perhaps also its connection to the centuries-old enigma of Java la Grande, a shadowy continent to the south of Timor charted by French mapmakers in the sixteenth century.

But does the old man have the information David needs? Does he hold a vital clue to the identity of the buried corpse? Determined to know the truth, David uncovers a story of obssession, secrets and sexual passion from a lifetime before.