When Jerry, an authoritarian professor vacationing in Hawaii, falls in love with a fiercely independent paraplegic woman named Cat, a tumultuous relationship can be expected. They split in a fiery argument and Jerry flies back to his East Coast life, but their skirmish fades into triviality when a powerful earthquake shakes Hawaii a few days later. Collapsed tunnels and rockslides isolate Kailua, the beach town where Cat lives.
Forced out of her aloof self-reliance by the disaster, Cat leads the community in a struggle to procure food and medicines; an extortion scheme against the nearby Marine Corps base, threats of Hawaiian independence—no measure seems too outrageous to her. Anxious for her life, Jerry desperately tries to return to Hawaii, but with the airports destroyed his only option is to sail across the winter-storm-whipped Pacific.
Whom can they trust? Jerry and Cat have to find out to survive… and if they do, maybe they will return to Paradise.