Susan Sheridan knows Martha’s Vineyard like the back of her hand. She grew up there as the eldest of the three Sheridan Sisters, their father the longtime owner of the Sunrise Cove Inn in Oak Bluffs. The Inn, the water, the sun all spun with laughter, and love, with the most important people—her family and friends. It was her glittering, perfect life—until it wasn’t. Tragedy struck over twenty years ago, and Susan has hardly said a word to her sisters or her father or anyone else she ever loved. Not until now.

Janine Potter grew up on the other side of the tracks. Her mother, Nancy, struggled with just about everything—alcohol, men, money—and Janine made a pledge to herself that she would never be like her. At age nineteen, Janine met Jack Potter, the son of an oil tycoon, and never looked back. Her life became a series of cocktail parties and multi-million-dollar apartments all across the world, and rubbing elbows with celebrities. Slowly, memory of her mother faded, although the trauma never really did.

When her Great-Aunt Jessabelle passes away and leaves her home to Samantha, Sam and her daughters, Darcy and Rachelle, begin refurbishment on The Jessabelle House, a glorious house not far from the town of Siasconset on Nantucket. Once there, Samantha discovers her aunt's diaries, which reveal dramatic secrets from the past—and still more reasons not to trust the Colemans.

The Copperfields were once the most beloved family on Nantucket Island. Twenty-five years ago, their lives changed forever. And they never saw one another again. Not until now. In the spring of 1997, Julia watched as a judge sentenced her father, the renowned novelist, Bernard Copperfield, to twenty-five years in prison for conning, swindling, and stealing millions of dollars from his dearest Nantucket friends and fellow artists. With her family in ruins around her, seventeen-year-old Julia packed up her bags and ran away, pledging never to return to Nantucket ever again.

April Raines is facing the end of her long-term marriage after her husband begins another family. Eager for a fresh start, she returns home with her grown daughters to Crown Island, just off the coast of Southern California.