A highly dsysfunctional family arrives in Long Island's trendy Hamptons for their annual summer reunion. After a wild night of partying, the family matriarch, Harriett Aubrey Grace, is found dead in the basement, the victim of a horrible accident or a terrible crime. Through the eyes of the estate's caretaker, Connelly, the reader relives Harriett's succesful yet sad life and investigates her suspicious death and the sordid list of relatives that might be responsible for the crime. Connelly teams up with Harriett's long estranged but beautiful daughter, Tush, and the duo rush headlong into a murky family history fraught with malevolence and perversion and their own combustible attraction nearly leads them to the brink of disaster. Bravery, heroism, love, hate, jealousy, rage and despair are only some of what the reader uncovers exploring Harriett's empire, an empire that in the end proves to be little more than a pile of dirt.