At a time when pristine wilderness is not yet conquered by high rise condominiums, three boys and a girl revel in the last of the Florida frontiers. Rusty and Chris spend summer days exploring the coastal wilderness of rolling sand dunes, blue water reefs, and hidden mangrove estuaries.
In their little seaside town of Egret the Conchs (Bahamian fisherman) have spent decades in this place, and some among them have been up to their old tricks but with a new twist. Though the untouched coasts of Florida were ripe for smuggling and rum running in times past, even as those wild coasts are being tamed, some among the Conchs are not prepared to abandon the ways of their forefathers or the inlets and lagoons they call home. It is in this setting in which the youthful play of adolescents is entangled in the plotting of hard handed criminals. Along the way, Rusty and Linda discover a centuries old relic amid a kitchen midden left by the Indians; sixteen ruby beads used as trading items by the Spanish. The beads become central to the story as a time gone by in a quickly changing world..