During the Great War in 1916, Abigail Maduro is devastated when her parents are killed in a freak accident along the Panama Canal. Orphaned and alone, she is sent to St. Thomas, an island in the Danish West Indies, to live with a bad-tempered aunt and her household of eccentric servants. Despite the island's veneer of tranquility, St. Thomas is a hotbed of German spies and saboteurs who are using their Hamburg-America Line steamers to aid the Kaiser’s War effort. When a mysterious stranger suddenly appears in town, Abigail is drawn into the conflict. In the handsome and scholarly Erich Seibold, Abigail finds the friendship she has been craving, even after she learns that Erich is really a deserter from a German U-boat. Their idyllic interlude comes to a crashing halt when the island's German consul also discovers Erich's identity and blackmails him into committing sabotage and murder. After an altercation involving the Danish governor designed to halt the upcoming transfer of the islands to the United States, Erich is thrown into prison and Abigail must choose between her safety and Erich’s life. Action and adventure abound in this colorful historical novel that brings to life a fading West Indian sugar colony in the last days of Danish rule.