"In the heart of the city that has no heart, that's where they meet and that's where they part." So a song faintly heard over the waters of Mobjack Bay in Virginia by a young boy is prophetic of his future life. A member of the first generation of American airmen, pilot in World War I, he barely escapes death first on the football field and then in the air. After the war he moves north to Boston, Mass. and to success in the fast moving business world of the 1920's. But he is trapped in a hasty marriage with a coldly indifferent wife and must battle a grasping father-in-law with whom his business dealings are entwined. At the heart of this novel is story of how he is saved by the daughter of a captain from the fabled fleet of Gloucester schooners, and in the shadow of 1929 and the Great Depression begins a new life with her.