Suffering from a severe case of writer's block, mystery novelist Laura Callaghan agrees to look after her sister's secluded beach house in Nova Scotia. There her only neighbors are long-time friend and artist, Ben Forrestal, and handsome Michael Sinclair who rents the small lighthouse nearby. Ben's studio is on the second floor of the large colonial inn he used to own, and Laura finds out through his old photographs and a diary that the inn was built in the 1790's by a seacaptain whose descendants were both fishermen and smugglers. This gives Laura inspiration to start working on a new novel, but when she realizes that Michael has a friend whose death was related to a current smuggling operation, she finds herself dangerously involved in more ways than one ...