People disappear! We read of such vanishings from time to time in our newspapers and see the distraught faces of their loved ones, as they appear on out TV screens, pleading for information and the safe return of the one they hold dear. This is a story of such a disappearance. A history of the affluent MacVee family whose lives were blighted by an event so bewildering and mysterious that, in old age, Vinnie MacVee feels compelled to write an account of the mystery that devastated the lives of her beloved brothers and herself over half a century before. Each member of her family is skilfully portrayed from the genius of Peter to the misfortunes of Dominic and the doomed love life of Teddy What really happened to Dorothea Stephens on the night of the great storm? And who was responsible?