It is 1958 and Josephine is staring at a Milo tin. She cannot make sense of the letters! To learn how to read, she needs to sell nasi lemak made by her loving mother to her neighbours in Kampong Potong Pasir, so she can have enough money to pay for school fees. Join Josephine on her quest to go to school, and on other adventures through grasslands and attap-thatched huts, to hunt for frogs and eels for food with her friends.

A novel about love, forgetting and remembering. Pansy Lim, a Peranakan girl, was brought up in a seaside village in colonial Singapore in the 1940s. She inherits her mother’s love for flowers, nature, the sea, and their healing qualities. Educated by English nuns, she learns and grows to love English, literature and poetry.