Angel del Corazón believes her past is firmly hidden behind a lie. After all, she’s content with her life as a single mother and author on the shell-encrusted Sanibel Island. Her life’s goal is within reach: her daughter Faith will go to college in the fall—the first in their line. This, Angel believes, will set Faith free of the disastrous pattern of loss and longing that has bedeviled her family for generations. Whether it is faith in the Sea Goddess Yemayá or in the Lord God Almighty or a disastrous love affair—Angel long ago barred the way to any claim on her heart. She may be lonely, but at least she’s free. When, Max, a handsome newcomer to the island, buys the local shell shop and shows romantic interest in her, her resolve is tested. His passion for shells and the Victorian shell craft of Sailors’ Valentines threatens to bring the Sea Goddess’s sultry influence once more into Angel’s life.

Determined to stay the course, she refuses to partner with him on the annual watch of the Loggerhead turtle nesting sites. Instead, she sets him up with a man-hungry woman, a mistake she will come to regret. Angel’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel when her daughter falls for a scoundrel, unknowingly repeating her mother’s and her grandmother’s patterns.

How can Faith be susceptible to a man cut from the same calamitous cloth as her father and her grandfather—men she never knew? Even as Angel questions her decision to hide the past, it rears its ugly head. With the lie of their lives exposed, mother and daughter become estranged. Distraught, Angel employs the superstitious methods her father taught her to call upon the Sea Goddess for help only to be further broken. In an attempt to win back her daughter’s trust, she writes a series of stories, introducing their colorful family characters, as well as revealing her painful story. While letting down the floodgates to the past, she also must begin to open her heart to Max or risk breaking both their hearts. Before Faith comes to understand her mother’s motives for lying, she sets out to meet her father and the danger that awaits. Angel must test her newfound faith in herself, as well as Max’s commitment, to save her daughter and free them both from the chains of the past. Can love and truth reimagine the patterns of the heart that we unknowingly inherit or are we forever doomed to repeat that which came before?