Who among us has not dreamed of going to the corner store and simply disappearing? Travers Landeman, a businessman from Ohio, has his own set of troubles. Not to mention his teenage nephew, Matthew, who has been abused by his parish priest. Matthew reaches out to Travers for help, but Travers turns away. With an unhappy life, Travers fakes his death on the Caribbean island of Mabuhay and unwittingly sets off a series of events. The years pass. It appears that Travers has gotten away with it. He settles into a new life with a new family. But then Albert McNab is hired by the Atlantis Fidelity Insurance Company to bring Travers back to Ohio and he is hot on Travers' trail. Chicago bookseller Joe Rogers leads a group of amateur archeologists to Mabuhay. At the dig site, he discovers an ancient treasure, a jeweled mask dating to the Arawak period. Will Joe, who has his own axe to grind with Atlantis Fidelity Insurance, leave the sidelines and get back in the game? Esmerelda McNab, United Nations Ambassador of its newest member nation, the Commonwealth of Mabuhay, has her own set of troubles Columbia University protesters who denounce her part in the sale of the mask that Joe Rogers discovered as "cultural genocide." Can love, redemption, and peace be found on Mabuhay? Or are somebody else's troubles, just that?