Jealousy eats at Louise. Like Esau, Louise is a twin, a few minutes older than Caroline, who, like Jacob, is the family favorite. Blond, pretty, with a voice like an angel, Caroline is selfish. Louise is plain, brunette, unappreciated, and hard-working, crabbing and oystering on the Chesapeake Bay island where they live, the money she earns paying for Caroline`s voice lessons. In her seventeenth year, between the Christmases of 1941 and 1942, with the help of an old sea captain who`s fought his own demons of bitterness and anger, Louise must get past her jealousy and figure out what it is she wants, what it is that she loves.