In a summer community on the coast of New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a girl is drawn into a passionate affair with a man nearly three times her age. Fortunes Rocks is the story of Olympia Biddeford, privileged, well-educated, and mature beyond her years, and her affair with John Haskell, who not only is a physician, essayist, and champion of mill workers but also a married man with children. Drawn inexorably together on the night of the summer solstice, the pair set in motion a series of events with far-reaching consequences for all involved.