A year has passed since the old world ended in a terrible flash. Just as the tiny island of Cedar Key is settling into a new way of living, a figure from its past arrives on the horizon commanding a fleet of sailing ships. A dark chapter from Cedar Key's history is reopened in the devastated world of the present, and now war is coming, inexorable as the tides.

In 1998, Isaac Skipjack's father was killed. Left to fend for himself, 17-year old Isaac is taken in by a prominent waterman on Cedar Key, who becomes a surrogate father to the boy. When Isaac learns this surrogate was involved in his real father's death, he leaves the island, hurt and vengeful. Two decades later, after the great experiment of humanity failed when nuclear blasts irradiated horizons around the world, Isaac, now a Senior Chief Petty Officer in the United States Coast Guard, leads a crew of survivors in a search for a home away from the nuclear devastation. When he learns that his former island home has largely survived the blasts, Isaac leads the young Coasties in his care toward Cedar Key, toward the unresolved hurt and betrayals he left behind there, toward a life and death collision with the islanders and the ghosts of his past.