Contemporary Americans and Britons spend five months on an isolated stretch of the Maine coast recreating the life of American colonists in the year 1628. The modern colonists struggle to create a functioning and profitable colony using only the tools and technology of that era. Extensive research went into recreating this 17th-century environment in which the colonists negotiate personal and communal challenges as they deal with the demoralizing weather, rustic living conditions, and backbreaking labor. Among the points of dissension that arise in the colony are: the rigid class and gender roles, mandatory religious observance, and the puritanical civil laws of the era, particularly those pertaining to profanity.