Henry David Esscombe, a pioneer tea planter, comes to Assam in the latter half of the 1850s and opens out the Dhanboa Tea Garden. However, the environment takes its toll and, gravely ill, he summons his son David to take over the plantation. His daughter, Cordelia, desperate to see her dear papa again, accompanies her brother.

As the brother-sister duo struggles to adapt to their changed circumstances, a host of individuals, including the phlegmatic Michael Bailin, the devilishly charming Christopher James Buckingham, the self-confessed anarchist Reverend Garry Swanson, the Assamese nobleman Gokuldeva Barua, the defiant conscripted tea workers Bircha and Meghu and others, intrude into their lives.

Against the backdrop of tea plantation life in the 1860s and the barbarous conditions under which migrant workers were lured and enslaved, a chain of events unfolds, leading to an unexpected, explosive climax which turns red the green leaves of camellia.

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