Alone and exhausted after a rebel attack on his father's mission settlement in remote China, thirteen-year-old Theodore is relieved to meet the earthy and colourful Mrs Jones, a botanist, and they flee together for the forbidden land of Tibet.

But are they really fleeing? Or being summoned? For the old Lama who rules in the many-domed monastery of Dong Pe insists they hold the clue to the birth of the long-awaited Tulku - a reincarnated spiritual master...