A beautifully sensual coming-of-age story about sibling rivalry, love, and betrayal, set in 1920.

The Eastern Shore of Virginia is beautiful, unspoiled, but isolated. Bracketed by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and the Chesapeake Bay on the west, its residents live by farming or commercial fishing. They rarely long for much beyond what they have. But Annie Revels, a plain, lonely young woman, has long envied what she sees as her father's free and exciting-looking life out on the water. She would be working alongside him, except for one thing: She was born not a son, but a daughter. And women and boats don't mix, or so everyone tells her. Annie's not like her younger sister Rebecca, who enjoys all the feminine trappings of girlhood. And she doesn't feel close to her mother, a sad, quiet invalid who rarely gets out of bed.

The Revels family depends on the water for their living, but for those who work on the sea, tragedy is always just one bad storm away. After her father's untimely death, Annie finally gets her wish, though not in the way she had wanted to. After the funeral, she takes up his occupation as a waterman, or rather, a waterwoman, in order to support her mother and sister. The days are long and the work grueling, harder than she'd ever imagined. When she meets fishing guide Nathan Combs, she finally sees a glimpse of a life she had always thought would elude her. But Annie never counted on the shocking kind of betrayal that can only come from those who are closest to you.

As she notes, "In order to live on the Shore, you need to understand that good weather always follows bad." And she will need every ounce of that strength and optimism in order to survive the coming storm....

"...Hart creates a believable world where tragedy does not always equal hopelessness, a place where you don't always get what you want, but if you're strong, you find reasons to go on living anyway." (Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel)