After eight years in the American furniture department at Christie's, twenty-nine-year-old Carolyn Everett is a rising star. But one wrong decision and a scandal leaves her unemployed and broken. Desperate to piece her life back together, Carolyn leaves New York City to work in a tiny antique store in Newport, Rhode Island. At a small county auction, Carolyn discovers a piece of Middle Eastern pottery, which she purchases for twenty dollars on a hunch. Curiosity sends her on a mission to find its original owner, and she eventually winds up in the town's United States Navy Base-and in a relationship with notorious womanizer Marine Sergeant Tyler Ford, who claims the relic came to him as a gift from his translator during the early days of the Iraq War. Tyler and Carolyn become obsessed with the mysterious relic-and each other-until the origin of the art comes under intense scrutiny and reveals a darker side of Tyler's past. Carolyn still feels like there's more to the story, but can she risk attaching herself to another scandal-and does she truly know the man she's fallen in love with?