Nicky Sullivan always nurses injured animals, but this time she's going to heal herself. She flees to a barrier island and discovers a kindred spirit in a sallty retired fisherman, Mac Moultrie. They ease into a leisure routine of shrimping in the marshlands, unaware of a murder committed to snatch old slave lands from a young black woman. From the moment Nicky lays eyes on Trippett Alston, she's smitten. This Southern gentleman, however, is more interested in fighting off the condominium development threatening his beloved island and its turtle nesting ground than in the "forlorn Yankee artist." Nicky and Trip are destined for each oother, but their allegiance to old causes, and the dark forces wirling around the island threaten to keep them apart.