John Morel, a leading figure in the Australian Communist Party, disappears and dies in a remote country hotel in suspicious circumstances. It looks like suicide, but why? Deeply puzzled, his friend Jack sets out to trace that last fateful journey, consulting John's family and friends and uncovering unexpected facets of John's character - his divisive upbringing, his time in a Roman Catholic seminary, his visits to Moscow and conversion to Communism, his ambivalent marriage and uneasy friendships with other members of the Party. This is not only an exploration of Communist ideology; it is also an exploration of social and psychological problems; the impulses behind acts of suicide; relationships between the individual and the group; between childhood fantasy and adult behaviour and between death and transcendence.