A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is adopted by the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, to show that the savage can be civilised. When Sir John disappears while looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, Lady Jane turns to the great novelist Charles Dickens for help. Inspired by historical events, Wanting is a haunting meditation about love, loss and the way life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting.