Lucy Hathorne and her friends Pyrtle, Cassie, and Velda live in the quiet fishing village of Maidenhead, Massachusetts. They are childhood chums who meet each Sunday for gossip and quilting. Their idyllic existence comes to an abrupt end when Lucy's charming and mysterious cousin makes a dramatic entrance aboard a red-sailed schooner. Sebastian Hathorne brings lethal bounty to Maidenhead: a poisoned crew and a cache of medical cadavers destined for the Harvard Medical School. His arrival during the blustery gale portends the hair-raising events to come. Nothing has prepared the girls or the young men who love them for the terrors ahead.