What if there existed a secret people, the secret people part of a secret nation, the secret People of the Nation secretly living right here among us in 21st century America? When soon-to-be high-schoolers Michael Costa and his best friend L.T. Haymaker discover that the holes they are digging are being mysteriously filled, they respond by organizing night-time watches, carrying out a risky reconnaissance op of Michael's home. More importantly, they ask questions of others and ask them too of themselves--both knowing that good as it is to find something, it even is better to find out something. Michael already knows hometown Best Harbor, Massachusetts is unusual. He senses Spitters like himself, from the Spit section of town, are somehow peculiar. He suspects newcomer to town L.T. and his motives; has a hunch as to who he is, but not why he is. Who was Miguel Cortereal, the great 16th century Portuguese explorer, and why after carving his marks onto nearby Dighton Rock did he decide to remain in the New World, set up home along the out-of-the-way and hidden banks of the Taunton River? Why is it Father Sousa holds one Sunday school for Spitters, another one for Besterners? Why does Mr. Alves, the head of the parish council, have it in for Michael, have it in for all Spitters? And L.T.'s anthropologist mother and her Harvard professor boyfriend, why are they meddling? For that matter, just what are they discovering about 'the People of the Nation'--and how close are they to discovering it? The Nation by the River lets readers in on a secret society, one that David Gitlitz, author of Secrecy and Deceit and A Drizzle of Honey, says is "a community immersed in an ethos of fear and secrecy that for them validates their identity as a group apart."