On a summer day on the Gulf of Mexico in 1988, two extraordinary things happen to Maeve Donnelly. First, she is kissed by Daniel, the boy of her dreams. Then, she is attacked by a blacktip shark. Eighteen years later, Maeve is a world-traveling marine biologist studying and swimming with the very animals that once threatened her life. Maeve is fearless in the water, but on land is dogged by unresolved wounds and indecisive about the path her life will take. When she returns to her childhood home on a small island off Florida's coast, she finds that her twin brother may be about to make it big as a novelist, using her love life as his jumping-off point.