Elizabeth Winters' life is a bit like a human shipwreck. She works at a job she hates in downtown Los Angeles, is dealing with major credit card and school loan debt and is living a life of 'quiet desperation' alone with her cat Betty Boop. Her world is turned upside down when she gets into a car wreck in the Angeles National Forest and meets a handsome introvert named Josh Emerson. He teaches her to live a simpler life through the teachings and principles of Henry David Thoreau while she teaches him to make peace with the 21st century as a steamy relationship develops between them. The story also includes a historic look back a the actual 'Wreck of Elizabeth' and Thoreau's account of traveling to Fire Island in search of Margaret Fuller Ossoli and her family who perished there in 1850. Included in the story are a host of colorful characters also in the midst of transforming their own lives. Max is one of them. His drug dealing days are over after overdosing on the drug fentanyl. This is a fictional story inspired by the author's love of Henry David Thoreau and her own ongoing attempt to simplify and to live more peacefully and in harmony with nature.