"What happens when an old man wakes up one morning and finds 'that everything and everybody ... that had given meaning to his existence' now fills him with revulsion; that he despises 'everything he had been, had become, had achieved?' What happens when that man is Faleasa Osovae, the most powerful alii in the village of Malaelua? What happens to his aiga and his village, to his lifelong friend, Laaumatua Lemigao - 'Clubfoot', and to himself when 'he decides he must be free, must make that leap into pouliuli, the darkness'? ..."--Back cover.