After the sudden death of his parents, fourteen year old Mark Talbot's comfortable and sheltered world crashes around him. His uncle, following instructions in his father's will, sends Mark to New Zealand to live with a colony of Maori people that his father knew and loved as a young man. Among these brown skinned Polynesians, Mark begins to grow to manhood, not just in body but in mind and spirit. His inherited family teaches him love, truth, beauty, and the satisfaction of hard work. Mark finally faces doubts, fears, and anxieties that have haunted him since his parents' deaths when he encounters a deadly shark in the ocean's dark waters. Here he confronts himself as well as the shark.