A hundred miles from Boston, and twenty-three miles across the water from Down Harbor, Britt Island could be reached only by boat or plane. Alison Clay had missed the plane and so she came home to Britt Island aboard the Sea Mountain.
Her uncle, Dr. Ben Clay, thought that Alison was coming to take over his practice while he had a prolonged vacation, but Alison, feeling that her practically new big-city practice would suffer if she remained away longer than three weeks, had already arranged for another city doctor to take over for Dr. Ben when she had to leave.
Dr. Nathan Bond was new in Down Harbor since Alison's last visit home, and Alison, who felt that all men doctors resented all women doctors, developed a real antagonism toward the young doctor who, in his weekly visits to Britt Island, had become a close friend of Dr. Ben's.
But Nathan, who had decided before he saw Dr. Ben's niece that he would not like her, found himself falling in love with her. And when he learned that she was, in a sense, double-crossing her uncle, he tried to reason with her--and succeeded only in making her more antagonistic toward him.
It took the serious illness of Dr. Ben's sister, the redoubtable Margaret Clay, and an awakened interest in the people of Britt Island, to bring back a true sense of values to Dr. Alison Clay, and to make her realize that Down Harbor doctors were on a par with the best of them. And that the handsome Dr. Bond was not her enemy.
