Successful and wealthy but fed up with his advertising career, gifted artist Cooper Hamilton is on the path to self-destruction. After surviving a near-fatal crash he returns to his South Carolina Sea Island roots where life has changed little since Reconstruction. Reunited with his extended family and Twilight, the mystical Gullah woman who raised him, he struggles with his demons. But because of his catharsis, his work takes on new vitality. The quintessential beauty of the Lowcountry somehow guides his hand as he captures it on canvas. He reconnects with his first love and embarks on a new life when he is caught up in a murderous scheme. An unscrupulous attorney and his flunkies are targeting black owners of suddenly valuable "heirs' property." Many are dispossessed from the only homes they have ever known by fraud, intimidation, and even murder. When Twilight is threatened Cooper must act to protect her. Together with Simon Albury, an itinerant Bahamian fisherman, he is drawn into a deadly confrontation with his life-long nemesis who is now a corrupt deputy sheriff and a major player in the plot. Just when it seems that Fletcher has the upper hand Twilight invokes the Spirits, but her act sparks tragic consequences.