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Prabir Suresh lives in paradise, a nine-year-old boy with an island all his own to name, explore, and to populate with imaginary monsters stranger than any tropical wildlife. Teranesia is his kingdom, shared only with his biologist parents and baby sister, Madhusree. The unexplained genetic mutation of the island's butterflies that brought his family to the remote South Moluccas barely touches Prabir; his own life revolves around beaches, the jungle, and the schooling and friendships made possible by the net.
When civil war breaks out across Indonesia, this paradise comes to a violent end and his family is broken apart, leaving Prabir with nagging feelings of guilt and an overwhelming, almost irrational, sense of responsibility for his sister. The mystery of the butterflies remains unsolved, but nearly twenty years later reports begin to appear of strange new species of plants and animals appearing throughout the region - species separated from their known cousins by recent, dramatic mutations that seem far too efficient and funtional to have arisen by chance from pollution, disease, or any other random catastrophe.
Madhusree is now a biology student; proud of her parents' unacknowledged work, and with no memories of the trauma of war to discourage her, she decides to join a multinational expedition being mounted to investigate the new phenomenon. Unable to cast off his fears for her safety, Prabir reluctantly follows her. But travel between the scattered islands is difficult, and Madhusree's expedition is out of contact. In the hope of finding her, Prabir joins up with an independent scientist, Martha Grant, who has come to search for clues to the evolutionary mystery and whatever commercial benefits it might bring to her sponsor. As Prabir and Martha begin to untangle the secret of Teranesia, Prabir is forced to confront his past, and to face the painful realities that have shaped his life while also dealing with the implications of an unprecedented biological revolution.
