Adam Klein is presented with a gift whose price is beyond dreams, perhaps beyond imagination. Now this gift threatens to destroy him.
The pace of life on St. Anthony Island is measured, but Adam's wife is angry, despondent with her choices. She wanted a rich, easy life; instead, she married a man who wishes only to cure and to care, a man whose vision, whose ambition is permanently grounded in the sweet tropical airs of the Caribbean.
Adam's outlet from family tension is a dugout canoe to Esperanza. There he finds a forgotten isle of escaped slaves, the survivors of pirate raids, a sea-going hermit and indigenous people who fled the sword and plague. But this off-the-grid Eden, a place of death apples, ancestor worship and fire walkers, is now threatened by billionaire developers.
The need to rescue the people of Esperanza is rooted deeply in Adam's psyche, but when his efforts go awry he is hounded by the police, by private investigators and even a papal inquisitor. As the mesh surrounding him tightens, Adam finds hope and new life in the most unexpected place ... his own heart.