Jacqueline Dark is a social worker specialising in emergency housing for the poor in Sydney during the 1990s. Jacq and her brother Kel hit a bad mid-life patch when memories of their rural childhood with their mad mother Lydia destabilise them. Jacq takes stress leave to Penang in Malaysia. While there, she tries to solve the mystery of her mother's belief that there is a family connection with Penang.Kel stays in his job at Sydney University where he is side-lined and reclassified. He relies on Jacq's letters to enrich his life. In lonely dance to the smokey voice of Greta Keller singing 'blue moon', he yearns for the love of Lydia, his mother.