The three of them were in the photo; standing prominently in front of their tanned bodies was a newly built sandcastle, formed with the patient fingers of a man who thought he was lost, a woman who was hiding from loss, and a child who needed to be found.

Disillusioned and lonely, country singer Dallas White hightails it off a stage in Seattle and hides in a small tent overlooking the beach in an idyllic Prince Edward Island campground. In the camp store Dallas meets Cassie Keough, an elegant young widow, and her quiet eight-year-old son, Ry. ‘Glamping’ in a luxury trailer for the summer at the same campground, Cassie is also taking a break from life and the constant ache that’s dogged her since her firefighter husband died tragically in an Alberta forest fire six years earlier.

Dal, as Dallas tells Cassie his name is, becomes the small Keough family’s shadow on the beach. By day they practice the art of sandcastle building. Their evenings are for guitar lessons—Dallas is only too happy to share with Ry the healing gift of music. But Dallas is hiding his true identity and Cassie has long ago built a wall that thwarts true connection, so the made-up family’s fairy-tale summer is as tenuous and fragile as the enchanted sandcastles they build in their magical island summer paradise.

This book is an independent part of the Drifters universe.