In the picturesque coastal village of Graniteport, Maine, Ned Bailey savors the view of his empire from his home built on a bluff above the harbor. Bailey - the self-proclaimed king of Graniteport - and the elders preserve village traditions based on man's law and a belief that people from away are dangerous and to be avoided and that those of French Canadian ancestry are inferior and to be shunned. Mae Horvath has been in the village for almost twenty years. Hopeful, loyal, and indomitable, Mae is fierce about being an American whose ethnicity happens to be Chinese. When she falls in love with Roy Slade, an attorney from away who settled in the village, it triggers an abhorrence of people violating what Bailey calls the natural order and jealousy on the part of her former husband, Sean. But everything changes when Roy's daughter and her husband visit Graniteport and make a fateful decision. In this gripping thriller, a deadly tragedy in an insular coastal village results in a cycle fueled by bigotry, hatred, love, renewal, and the emptiness of revenge as secrets are exposed and a town's people are forever transformed.