Lucinda lived like a princess on her father's private island off the coast of California, Isla del Oro. But she was really a prisoner, shut off from the world, never allowed off the island. Then Christopher Dawson, a young archeologist, came to the island and into her life. And Lucinda began to realize the horrifying truth about the island . . . and about her father.

The inheritance of her father's vast fortune and contact with a variety of people with suspicious motives trigger a series of attempts on Lucinda's life in her isolated island home, which is a stronghold of Spain within the boundaries of the United States.Under the guardianship of Senor Villaverde, Lucinda de Cabrillo y Benivides, a fabulously wealthy young woman, struggles to improve the quality of life in Isla del Oro while grappling with her fear that someone is trying to murder her