Silver Strand The Long Beach Saga is first and foremost a story about a beautiful place, Long Beach, New York. A near two-hundred year-history is told through the lives of three families, that of Bridget O’Herlihy/Calico Jack, Peripat Smolens and Amos Finch and a mystery that involves all of the families.

Bridget O’Herlihy is an unlikely heroine entrusted to bring a sacred relic across the sea from Ireland in 1837. She survives while scores perish in a cruel winter shipwreck yards from a barrier beach off the coast of Long Island. An opportunity for a new life is presented but she is trapped by the foul deed she committed to insure her survival. She makes her way in a world of backwater bays and marshes to be reborn in a life she could never have imagined. Bridget struggles to find her way through her initial dependency on reclusive half-breed bayman, Calico Jack, but grows to be his equal. Peripat Smolens is an unassuming man who plays a large role as Calico Jack’s sidekick and Bridget’s devotee despite her underappreciation of his unquestioning support. Peripat’s descendants’ good citizenship in the developing community contrasts with Amos Finch’s clan of pirates, criminals and thugs.

The history progresses from the inner waters of the area to the sandy barrier beach when in 1880 the Long Island Rail Road builds a magnificent Victorian hotel on the seashore of the barren island. It is at the outset of the Gilded Age when old-moneyed Knickerbocker aristocrats, like the Van Maelstroms and Quills, are at the peak of their ascendancy. Victorian women are still a step away from being able to break free from the closed society’s mores.

After twenty-seven years the Long Beach Hotel burns to the ground in 1907 just as an ambitious visionary, William H. Reynolds, steps on stage and creates a city by the sea for the nouveau riche and burgeoning upper middle class. Distinctive villas, modern resort hotels and a grand seaside boardwalk are at the heart of his dream of creating a better Atlantic City. Long Beach becomes a beach playground where people come for the healthy salt baths and to see and be seen. Along the boardwalk, well-healed folks dance the Fox Trot and Tango in the 1910s, the Charleston and Rum Bottom in the Roaring Twenties and the Lindy in the 1940s. An era of bootlegging is replaced by a Great Depression and that by the period of a Second World War. All the while the city grows and matures into a diverse, community as modern times arrive. At the core of Long Beach are the wonderful waters that surround it providing a unique way of life, while at the same time potentially threatening its very existence as nearly happened with Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Weaving through this saga is the mystery of the lost staff of Saint Patrick.