Bells and Shadows is a historical psychological novel that interweaves the stories of a father and a daughter in British Colonial Fiji at two different points in time. G.H. Lee is a settler who has come to the South Pacific to make his fortune, with little feeling for indigenous Fijians, indentured Indian workers, or even his own daughter.
His journal of risk, romance, and cruelty alternates with chapters told from the point of view of his daughter decades later, who has rebelled against her father's colonial worldview and has paid a steep emotional price that she struggles to overcome.