Selling your soul for love is a bad idea – especially in South America.

In a market in Buenos Aires, a spirited young Australian woman meets a Peruvian artisan who crafts traditional jewellery. The year is 1995, and she has left home for the first time, determined to travel for as long as it takes for her bones to bend her into a new shape.

Leigh has a desperate need for love, second only to her desire for escape. She is spellbound by the artisan, Gabriel. But she’s about to travel Brazil, Bolivia and Peru with her friend Emily and leaves Buenos Aires, vowing to return.

The trip fulfils Leigh’s dreams to see Iguazu Falls, Rio, the Amazon and Machu Picchu. After three months, she reunites with Gabriel and they fall in love. But Gabriel takes cocaine, and memories of her heroin-addicted father surface. She flees to the UK.

In London, Leigh thinks only of Gabriel. When she begins working with celebrity New Age author Stuart Wilde, she gets a crash course in self-empowerment. But after six months, she is unable to ignore the pull of Gabriel’s love, and returns to South America.

Leigh and Gabriel live in his family home in Lima, under the watchful eye of his mother. But when Gabriel’s closest friend dies in a drug-related accident, they must leave. They hit the road, selling jewellery in the streets of South and Central America. When they discover an idyllic village in the Mexican Caribbean, they feel they’ve found their home.

But as time passes and Gabriel changes, Leigh grows unhappy. She must face the truth: she does not belong. When Gabriel betrays her, Leigh is crushed.

She faces a bitter choice between her soul mate and her soul. Three years after leaving Sydney, she returns alone, ready to live in her own skin.