It's a turbulent time on the island. A grandmother has disappeared. Resisting her parents' objections to her going back into the violence they had fled to settle in the U.S., twenty-six-year-old Claire Wynter returns to the place of her childhood to help the family members there search for the missing grandmother with whom she had lived as a child and whom she loves almost as much as she does her own mother. Once on the island, Claire receives a jolt of reality. The family members have given up their search, feeling that the prevailing violence had swallowed up the grandmother, so it was useless looking for her. Claire finds herself a one-woman search party, but she feels certain her grandmother is alive and begins her search. She accepts help from an unlikely source and sets out on a venture she could not have undertaken on her own. The suspenseful path to finding her grandmother leads through missteps, dashed hopes, and to a beckoning romance. EVERYONE INVOLVED--MOST OF ALL CLAIRE--IS UNPREPARED FOR THE OUTCOME.