Sweet, sleepy -- beautiful -- old Pompey's Head, South Carolina. Anson Page thought he'd ground it out of his life for good. Now a Manhattan lawyer representing a large publishing house, he's returning to his hometown after fifteen years to investigate the mystery surrounding one of his client's authors, a major American novelist who lives on nearby Tamburlaine Island. Both painfully familiar and irrevocably altered, the landmarks and people in Pompey's Head resurrect for Page the sweep of his past life.