Jacob's Island, a barrier island located on Virginia's Eastern Shore, is a mysterious place - a seemingly parallel universe where legend has it an angel once lived. Enter Shelby Parks who is spending her vacation on the island to pursue her one diversion in life - bird watching. Shelby is sophisticated, intelligent and motivated - a successful attorney who seemingly has it all. But she lives in the shadow of her dead husband. It has been two years and she still cannot let him go. Her guide while on the island is Morgan Brooks, an enigmatic figure who is mentally impaired, has no known past, and a knack for irritating Shelby in every conceivable way. But as time goes by she begins to see something special in this simple and unpretentious man. She also begins to piece together his past - a past that she never could have imagined. Not only does Shelby have to deal with Morgan Brooks, she finds herself sucked into a vortex of weirdness and the unexplainable. Thelma, the cook and housekeeper on the island, has only an eighth-grade education, yet she seems to possess the wisdom of the universe and omnipotent insight into the human condition. Earl and Pincus, the maintenance men, fancy themselves inventors. They develop outlandish contraptions that defy logic, but somehow work as advertised. And lastly, Turk, assistant housekeeper and pregnant lesbian, who has succumbed to "Billy Ray's Power."