A troubled mother's spirit crumbles when her adult children strike out for independence. Feeling abandoned she contemplates taking drastic action.

French Indochina, 1931. In the Gulf of Siam, a Widow and her two children, Joseph, 2o, and Suzanne, 16, barely survive by exploiting rice fields located much too close to the ocean. Every year their crops are flooded and their only hope lies in the construction of a seawall. The mother refuses to give up and desperately battles both the sea and the corrupt colonial bureaucrats ...—Guy Bellinger