A riptide of circumstances engulfs the maritime Atlantic fishing village of Herring Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada. It's a time of peace and war, love and loss, life and death, all amidst underlying racial temperatures. Time moves through three generations. Memories of the past submerge the present. And stories are born. After a pilot boat went down in March of 1940, people in the fishing villages remember that fateful night over all of their years, generation after generation. And the fates of others are carried into the war years of WWII as the all-black community of Africville comes to play an important role in all of the times that move along with Herring Cove and its characters.