In the hills of Dartmoor a dam bursts.
The wall of water drowns the artificially drained valley, recreating a sea estuary. It drowns land, creates an island from a farmstead and destroys a home, washing away a boy, a girl and their parents. The girl is saved by the father and son now marooned on their island, Loft Island; the others are dead.
The Lofts take Mary in. They have to encounter the injustices of the time, the 1950s, and attitudes which are foreign to modern life. They find support and friends, as well as unsympathetic officialdom. They endure the inquest and the funerals each made traumatic by the unwanted attentions of a relative of the girl who believes she should become her guardian.
The two youngsters, barely out of childhood, naturally support each other. Gradually their long friendship develops in total innocence and without either realising it.
Around them the farm can no longer provide a living and poverty rears its head.
And then the girl, Mary, disappears without trace. Stephen's father tries to provide an income through smuggling. His son is distraught about the loss of both his father and Mary, his friend. What happens next? The book will tell all.
