Two children, age 10 and 12, brought up by nature in a Dylan Thomas vision of New England during the 50's, see through the black and white television of their era, while radio still strongly played in the imagination of all, Disney created his fantasies, and the 15 cent Saturday matinee brought Hollywood and the world to the kids. It was a time when parents provided the basics and children nurtured themselves in hideaways by the sea and in tree houses, they built in the woody Atlantic havens of mysterious pre-Revolutionary America.

When her father decides to move his family to Los Angeles, 10-year-old Scotty cling to the memories of the town where she was born, the venerated bulwark of pre-Revolutionary history and romance, Marblehead, Massachusetts, Scotty turns a calendar into her diary as she struggles to memorize her last days of childhood.

Separated by time and space, the two children, Marguerite Scott Paine (Scotty) and Neil Montague, mature into disillusionment. One takes the road of dogma and the other falls prey to arrogance and greed in a hopeless pursuit of knowledge. They reunite in Marblehead fifteen years later, to reclaim their romantic birthrights. In a passionate examination of what went wrong in paradise, Scotty and Neil bond and re-identify their roots by exploring the history they had taken for granted, helped by their own insights, and the memories of a beggar named Zig.