It is 1974 and Kelly Ross is a young teacher struggling to inspire her high school students in spite of a deteriorating building, pupil antics and the inept leadership of Principal Alec Smythe. She finds a note marked "death" in her mailbox the same day that an exceptionally bright former student, Michael Kalisto, washes up dead on the beach. Setting out to discover how he died, Kelly stumbles upon a drug and pedophilia ring involving people she knows and trusts. What follows is a fast-paced series of events, including a bomb threat, a love affair, and yet another death, before the mystery is finally solved. Set in the early days of the gambling industry in Atlantic City, this is a story of individual lives figuratively and literally swept into a turbulent sea, sweeping the reader along with them until the very last page.