The year 1898 finds young Jim Wilcox enjoying a privileged life in beautiful coastal Elizabeth City, North Carolina, but his world blazes under a rising tide of Southern intrigue and violence. After Jim falls in love with Nell Cropsey, a newcomer from Brooklyn, he gradually drifts into ragged torment from her habitual rudeness and unspeakable secrets. Then twenty-year-old Nell, who claims to be nineteen, disappears from her riverside home on a cold...