After seventeen years at sea, Linda Greenlaw figured it was time to take a break from her career as a swordboat captain. She felt she needed to return to Isle au Haut - a tiny island seven miles from the Maine coast with a population of 70 year-round residents, 30 of whom were her relatives. She would pursue a simpler life; move back in with her parents and get to know them again; become a professional lobsterman; and find a guy, build a house, have kids, and settle down.

But all doesn't go as planned. The lobsters resolutely refuse to crawl out from under their rocks and into the traps she and her stern man (AKA, her father) have painstakingly set. Her fellow Islanders, an extraordinary collection of characters, draw her into their bizarre Island intrigues. Guys prove even more elusive than lobsters. And as mainlanders increasingly fish waters that are supposed to be reserved for Islanders, she realizes the that the Island might be heading for a "gear war," a series of attacks that had in the past escalated from sabotage of equipment to extreme violence.

Then, just when she thinks things couldn't get much worse, something happens that forces her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about life, luck, and lobsters.