Maggie Conrad's husband of ten days is sent overseas in WW1 and never comes home. A second suitor is lost at sea in Nova Scotia's August Gale. Turning thirty, and on her own, she resolves to make a life for her herself and her younger brother, Ivan. Against her wishes, Ivan goes to work for the rum runners and operates a surf boat bringing shipments ashore. When war-veteran and Prohibition Preventative agent, John Murdock, arrives undercover in the area he is referred to Maggie for room and board. With a rum runner and a man she suspects is a policeman living under her roof, Maggie must juggle law and justice, family loyalties and her growing attraction to John as she decides whether marriage might be in the cards for her after all.