As a child, Tina Morris dreamt a handsome prince would come and take her away to live happily ever after, but the reality was that her father was an alcoholic and her siblings called her ‘the little bitch’. Disillusioned and with a young daughter to support, she turns to prostitution and drugs, hiding her shame and fears behind the persona of ‘Courtney’, the tough parlour girl.
When Courtney and a friend agree to meet some visiting Russian sailors on board their fishing trawler, then begins a journey neither girl could ever have envisioned. Labelled ‘stowaways’ by the media back home in New Zealand, they find themselves sailing to Nakhodka, Russia, on a ship full of sailors with whom they cannot communicate.