After a prank makes Joey Norton believe he killed his older brother, he runs away from home and spends the day at Coney Island while his brother tries to find him before their mother gets home.

Crad Hobbs, a Virginia waterman, is depressed over the decline in the shellfish trade and the gradual erosion of his former home, a barrier island off Virginia's Eastern Shore. Worse, his beautiful daughter and only child is engaged to a returning World War II veteran who forsakes the oystering trade to take a job with the local newspaper. The cub reporter's first job is interview a New York banker, and former resident, who has secretly come to the Eastern Shore to provide a loan for a beleaguered Latin-American president whose country is battling communist insurgents. Hobbs blames the banker for his home island's destruction; he believes if the banker had approved a loan for a system of breakwaters, the erosion, and resulting loss of fishing habitat, could have been prevented.