In 1868, on the barren shores of post-war Outer Banks North Carolina, the disconnected Sinclair family moves for the summer to one of the first cottages on the ocean side of the resort village of Nags Head. In the simple and isolated Outer Banks house, they see their deepest desires manifested in dramatic ways.

Nolan Sinclair, the once wealthy and powerful planter from Edenton, North Carolina, is fearful of losing his plantation in the Reconstruction aftermath of the Civil War. In a desperate act of assertion, he moves his family and servants to the unusual house on the sand. There, on the porch of the cottage, his 17-year-old daughter, beautiful, book-smart and boxed-in Abigail, is encouraged to teach her father’s fishing guide, good-natured, ambitious and penniless 19-year-old Benjamin Whimble, how to read and write. The two come to understand, and then to love each other, despite the demands of their parents, the pursuit of prim and proper medical student Hector Newman, and Ben’s longtime relationship with sour-tongued net-mender, Eliza Dickens.

But as Abby and Ben come to learn, tackling the alphabet is the easy part of the summer. As Abby’s mother spirals into pregnancy-induced madness, and her father involves Ben in his Ku Klux Klan dirty work, it soon becomes doubtful that their newfound love will survive the terrible tragedy and surprising revelations that one hot Outer Banks night brings forth.