As a growing boy Theophilus had successively aspired to nine different life-careers - including those of saint, archaeologist, detective, lover, actor, and rascal. At the age of twenty-nine he finds himself engaged in tutoring jobs in Newport, Rhode Island.

The life of Ida Lewis, America's first official female lighthouse keeper and the first woman to win a Congressional Medal.

In the fall of 1966, Eduardo Tirella, close confidant of billionaire Doris Duke, informed the possessive and vindictive heiress that he was leaving her employ as chief designer and art curator to return to Hollywood where his career as a set designer was just catching fire. Minutes later, she crushed him to death under the wheels of a two-ton station wagon as they were leaving Rough Point, her Bellevue Avenue estate in Newport, RI, the storied resort....