All lawyer Will Chambers wants to do this summer is relax with his wife, Fiona... A long stay on the North Carolina coast seems perfect. But when Will reluctantly looks into a local inheritance case involving Jonathan Joppa, a down-on-his-luck preacher- "Piracy charge-Joppa's ancestor? What...when?" "Why, for being part of Blackbeard's pirate crew...in the early 1700s..." Will just wants to rest, but Fiona keeps insisting there's something missing...buried. Soon the two have had a near-fatal brush with smugglers-and together they've unearthed the truth: about a pirate's history, about Jonathan Joppa, and about two remarkable women-one in the past, and one in the present.