My father always said with a name like Kitty Hawke I'd surely fly away. He said my mother should have thought of that before she named me. It was the way on the island, time out of mind . . . Times have changed.

Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation, until one night her pregnant granddaughter rows ashore, desperate, begging for sanctuary.

For years, Kitty has kept herself to herself, with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl; unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps merely avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these. And when trouble comes following the children, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will protect them as fiercely as her name suggests...