Anton Pavlova once dreamed of becoming a great dancer, but life took him in a different direction. Now a hardened agent with the USIB, he cannot remember much about the young girl who was once been his wife, or the circumstances of her death. Nor could he understand his own self-degrading behavior, or the underlying anger that caused it. Only Paul Sanderson, his superior, and Leslie Fairchild, psychologist in the USIB, know. All of his career he has avoided relationships, both professional and romantic, managing to hide from the vulnerability of human emotions by losing himself in his work. But now, reassigned to a sleepy rural town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains he meets Hope, a young woman in an abusive relationship with Steven Wykes, best friend of Dan Philips, Anton's new partner. Anton also meets Hope's friends: the alarmingly affectionate Jeff; a deaf boxer named Noah, who can barely conceal his own love for Hope; and others with complications of their own. While family and relationship drama threaten to tear the group of friends apart, it is in the unweaving of their issues that Anton's own complex story begins to unravel. The Pebble and the Man is the story of his emotional journey toward love.