When the brig Amaryllis was swallowed in a hurricane, the captain and
all the crew were swallowed, too. For thirty years the captain's widow,
Geneva Reade, has waited, certain that her husband will send her a
message from the bottom of the sea. But someone else is waiting, too,
and watching her, a man called Seward. Into this haunted situation comes
Jenny, the widow's granddaughter. The three of them, Gran, Jenny, and
Seward, are drawn into a kind of deadly game with one another and with
the sea, a game that only the sea knows how to win.