Nora Costain, a widow, half owner of a successful real estate company, is on vacation on a small island off the North Carolina coast, where she meets two elderly neighbors and finds a sawdust hill infested with rattlesnakes. She also finds that she likes to be around the captain of the mail boat that takes passengers to the different islands out in the bay. While she is away, her thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Holly, is caught and raped by two high school boys after a school dance. These two boys are from another nearby school. Holly refuses to allow her mother to go to the authorities...