In the late 19th century, three barrier islands off the coast of Georgia--Sapelo, Jekyll, and St. Simons--sit side-by-side with vastly different cultures and evolving personalities. Sapelo, wild and untamed by the Gully/Geechee people, Jekyll, owned by the richest people in the world, and St. Simons, a prosperous resort.
Amanda McKenzie, a northern nurse trained at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, wants to establish a clinic in the south. Her husband Michael wants to transform his southern plantation on St. Simons Island into a resort hotel. Bobby Keefer, a profane, pugnacious, twelve-year-old orphan born with a cleft palate, wishes to assuage the torment of abandonment and his love for Amanda.
Amanda expected to be a nurse and build her clinic after Michael builds his inn on the island but Michael wants her to be his helpmate at the hotel, a hostess in St. Simons society, and bear him many children. Amanda is able to hone her skills as a nurse and mid-wife and tries to assimilate herself into Southern society. She loves Michael but refuses to be defined by her husband. What she fails to recognize is the degree of resentment and rejection he felt when she chose to pursue a career after marrying him. Although Michael loves her she is not the wife he envisioned. He becomes disenchanted with her and is dangerously close to cheating on his wife.
There are great challenges for the McKenzies. The nation is in the midst of an economic depression, yellow-fever strikes costal Georgia, and a major hurricane destroys the clinic and the McKenzie Inn on St. Simons Island.
SOMEWHERE BY THE SEA is Amanda and Michel's love story set in a constantly changing American culture.
