Florida, 1935: In the small segregated town of Heron Key, where the relationships are as tangled as the mangrove roots in the swamp, everyone is preparing for the Fourth of July barbecue - unaware that their world is about to change for ever. Missy, maid to the Kincaid family, feels she has wasted her life pining for Henry, a black veteran who has returned from the battlefields of France along with a group of other desperate, destitute ex-soldiers: unsure of his future; ashamed of his past... When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death, suspicion falls on Henry. And as the tensions rise, the barometer starts to plummet - far out over the Atlantic, the greatest storm ever to strike North America is heading their way...