Bubba Van Roekel is the unofficial King of the bay. Each year he donates twenty-five crayfish for the New Years' Fisherman’s Ball. This year the crayfish have mysteriously failed to return from the breeding islands. Bubba’s beautiful Russian wife, Kate, was made redundant by her modelling agency almost a year ago. Feeling trapped by her marriage, and the isolation of Baileys beach, she wanders the hills. Then a stranger washes up on the beach – an enigmatic, sophisticated man who claims to be the travel writer Carlaw Thewliss. Bubba may love his wife; but Thewliss knows how to woo her.