Forced to leave San Francisco after the devastating earthquake of 1906, Fremont (née Caroline) Jones follows her heart to the bohemian beach community of Carmel-by-the-Sea. She is eager to be reunited with her elusive suitor, retired spymaster Michael Archer, but finds him mysteriously metamorphosed into Misha--otherwise occupied and decidedly unavailable for sleuthing. But the irrepressible Fremont Jones has her pride, and determined to restart her typewriting business part-time, she signs on as temporary keeper of the Point Pinos Lighthouse.

She has barely settled in to her watch when a velvet-clad corpse washes in on the tide--and Fremont is off on a new and ultimately life-threatening quest. Starting with the free-spirited artists of Carmel, she searches for clues to the identity of the dead woman and uncovers a community filled with intrigue, violence, and plenty of motives for murder. When Fremont is attacked and robbed, her lighthouse torched, and the artist helping her turns up missing, she realizes she is perilously close to the truth. And that the next body to drift in on the tide might well be her own.