"Doctor David Smith and ... wife Brenda ... leave Boston, Massachusetts and move to the Pridgen Plantation ... a beautiful Spanish style mansion across the sound and Intracoastal Waterway at Wrightsville Beach, NC. The place is gorgeous! ... Doctor Smith, while doing research for UNCW, takes a team of scientists off the continental shelf ... [and] the scientists come to the unthinkable conclusion that the entire continental shelf out from Wrightsville Beach is in danger of collapsing, which would generate a huge tsunami that would destroy the town"--Page 4 of cover.