In 1995, an Air Force test pilot’s Osprey tiltrotor helicopter is sabotaged and crashes in the Pacific Ocean. The co-pilot’s body is found in the partly submerged plane, but the pilot is nowhere to be found. An extensive air search finds no one, and the pilot is presumed to be lost at sea.
A local fisherman off the coast of Molokai, Hawaii, rescues an unconscious survivor on a raft weeks later, barely holding onto his life. When he is revived in a Molokai hospital nearly a month later, he suffers from total amnesia and has no identification on him. For the next twenty-nine years, he lives alone on Molokai, still suffering from memory loss and surviving on seasonal farm work and occasional runs as a tour guide on the island. He is known simply as Whitey.
A random photo of him in the background of a tourist’s shot at a lookout point on Molokai, where the cliffs descend to an old leper colony below, raises the curiosity of an older brother, a retired physician from Rochester, New York. The resemblance is uncanny and leads Harry Esten, a classmate of the brother of the missing pilot, and a retired FBI agent, on a search to find the elusive Whitey.
An estranged wife, a loving brother, a greedy military contractor, an immoral aircraft mechanic, and a talented psychotherapist all become a part of Whitey’s world in 2024. Follow Harry Esten and his wife, Laura, on this intriguing journey of murder, sabotage, heartaches, and evasive memories, as they go overboard to help an old classmate on his quest, and bring those responsible to justice.