Forced to abandon his musical career, Coleman finds himself in the company of ghosts as he struggles to move his father's sailing boat out of dry dock. There is the ghost of his teacher, a black jazz musician living quietly on the edge of a predominantly white town; his grandfather, a rum runner and pirate of the Great Lakes; and his first love, a woman unafraid of the past. And then there is also the memory of the ill-fated affair which led him to abandon his music