It is 1984. Coconut Key is a small island north of Key Largo and South of Key Biscayne. Blake Martin has spent his adult life searching for an elusive treasure in South America. He had spent the last couple of years as the island handyman and the local unpublished novelist. Enter a job to take away some unwanted junk from a rich recluse's house and Blake's financial situation changes. Some expensive wine and first editions are within the lot. He's going to forget his life's failures and just enjoy the winter on the key. That doesn't last long. Within the books is an undistributed novel from the 1940's, edited by a famous fiction editor of that era. Blake begins to transpose his own manuscript—which suffers from lack of narrative-drive—into the structure of the found novel. This sets off an unlikely series of events. He meets Gina Saxton, the beautiful granddaughter of the recluse. Gina is searching for some lost papers of her grandmother's. Blake and Gina fall in love. They soon part. Gina is off to New York to help settle her grandmother's estate. From a coincidental clue in the found novel, Blakes's off to Alabama to search for the treasure he thought was in South America. Blake's life goes into a tailspin. He makes it back to Coconut Key. Gina returns and together they discover that these almost unworldly coincidences all have a logical common thread.