World War I widow, Maggie Conrad Benson, loses a second suitor to The August Gale of 1927 and her father to a heart attack. Turning thirty, and left on her own, she resolves to make a life for herself and her younger brother, Ivan. Wanting to pay off family debts, Maggie takes whatever jobs she can find, and Ivan works for the rum runners and bootlegs along the local coast. When war-veteran and Prohibition Preventative agent, John Murdock McInnis, arrives undercover as the new school teacher, he is referred to Maggie for room and board. With a bootlegger and a man she suspects is a policeman living under her roof, Maggie must juggle law and justice, family loyalties and her growing attraction to John Murdock as she considers whether marriage or a single life is for her.