Hastings Thumb

Bart, Otis, Lynn and Vera, reared in the small, ingrown, New England coastal community of Hastings Thumb, are never out of each other's sight until World War II splits them apart. Lynn Faraday, a striking beauty with an inborn sense of theater and a casual regard for the truth, and plain, clever, manipulative Vera, are in love with Otis, whose strict code of honor exasperates them both. Bart, who idolizes Otis as much as he loves Lynn, defers to his hero. Otis sails to the South Pacific expecting Lynn to wait for him. After she marries the man who has guided her to warime success on Broadway, Otis's resentment becomes a lifelong obsession. When, after an absence of fifty years during which Vera has acted as caretaker of the Faraday mansion, the widowed Lynn retires to her ancestral home, her return triggers a campaign of escalating malice.