Christopher Lake is an artist who prides himself on his sophisticated taste and his influence on others. Recently, however, his art has begun to desert him. He cannot draw, and no novel ideas will come to him. Lake is terrified that once he has ceased to be relevant, he will be abandoned by all his friends and forgotten entirely. Everything changes when an Irish family, the Dolans, moves into the Wigglesworth House. Harm's Shoals' high society looks down upon the Irish, and several people make nasty comments about their new neighbours. Lake sees a chance to re-establish himself as a tastemaker, and goes against the majority opinion by advocating for the acceptance of the Dolans. He creates an aesthetic idea of them in his head that stimulates his artistic side once more, and things seem to be finally looking up. Lake's influence and power are reaffirmed when everyone else starts to follow his example and accept the Dolans. However, his fascination with the family quickly becomes obsessive - he begins to see them as his creations, his possessions, and frequently attempts to alter their characteristics and behaviour to what he considers 'proper.' Unfortunately, Mrs. Dolan soon becomes fast friends with Percival Heath, who is Lake's biggest rival. Believing himself to be excluded and abandoned, Lake is inflamed with jealousy and unable to control himself. His artistic 'spark' is gone and he is once again tormented by the idea of being irrelevant - so he decides to use his own social standing to make the Dolans pariahs once more, hoping it will fix his own situation in the process. As he settles on a course of action, he looks out on the horizon, believing a longstanding shipwreck to have been washed out by the sea; it is still there.