Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast, with his ward Constance Greene, has arrived in Exmouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the theft of a priceless wine collection. But inside the cellar, behind the empty bottle racks, they find something considerably more macabre: the remains of a sealed chamber complete with rusted leg irons, fragments of bone and claw marks on the inside-face of its bricks. Then a historian is found murdered in the desolate salt marshes...

Investigate the first precision technique for genetic engineering, CRISPR, heralded as holding the potential for science fiction-like manipulation of the human genome. Trace the history of CRISPR-based techniques from a coastal salt marsh, to the fight over patents. Consider the potential for abuse of this powerful tool.

Dick Pierce, fisherman and boat-builder, lives on the Rhode Island shore in a backwater world of salt marshes, alcoholic fishermen, crab boats and old homesteads disappearing under new resorts for inland tourists. A stubborn man thoughtful enough to know that the world is becoming too small for men like himself, Pierce has a mortgage, a family, a "puny income from lobstering" and a dream: to finish the half-built boat in his backyard so he can fish...