West College's incoming Board of Trustees member, Buck Brady, wants nothing more than to help his wife's alma mater. The school has been in upheaval recently over a murder investigation and the subsequent resignation of its president and is struggling to recover its image. Brady charters a schooner to help his fellow trustees welcome the new president of the college, but no one could predict the aftermath. After one trustee is lost overboard in a storm, everyone aboard wonders if it was really an accident.
As a series of apparently unrelated accidents and attacks plague the college, professors Nora Perry and Hendrick van Pelt, along with several of the trustees, suddenly find their lives threatened. As decades of passions, infidelities, and obsessions are unveiled, Nora insists the events must be connected. But without a motive and no clear suspect to question, Nora and Van have no choice but to partner once again with Captain Frank Pierce to find the connections and reveal the twisted motives hidden in human hearts.
In this continuing mystery saga, a sleuthing trio must grapple with deceit, murder, decades-long grudges, and love in the beautiful setting of the Chesapeake Bay.