A Manhattan corporate attorney, with career and marriage in turmoil, drives desperately away from all he knows to an out-of-season resort on Long Island. As he struggles to put his life back together, he meets a surfer, a fisherman, and a Native American woman fighting to preserve ancestral land threatened with development, a fight that eventually endangers her life. The tension between past and present comes alive as he finds new meaning in life through the natural world and social justice for a long-oppressed race of people.

The novel takes place in the eastern end of Long Island, the ancestral home of the Montauks, a Native American tribe. The story reveals how they lost their land to the settlers and historical characters come to life in a battle to preserve their land.