The unexpected is precious or destructive, as Rick Harwood finds out—twice. Rick, a Special Forces officer at the height of the Vietnam War, stayed in Saigon to build a successful life. Displaced in the wake of the fall of South Vietnam, he loses everything. He seeks to recover the pieces of his shattered life in an imagined idyllic Hawaii. It is not to be. Instead, he finds that he is a refugee in his own country, confronted by a series of marital and professional challenges. As problems pile up, he wonders what happened to the successful man he was. He fears that he has lost his identity, alone and alienated, until a heroic act of his attracts the attention of some local surfers, and doors long closed to him crack open. These guys, longtime close friends and uniquely Hawaiian personalities, are intrigued by his courage. They “adopt” him, and a special relationship, sometimes humorous, even riotous, but always humane, develops. These colorful guys, who surf, drink beer, and speak in Hawaiian pidgin, are utterly unlike him or anything he has ever known. They teach him to surf, to see joy in a day of good waves, and to view and experience life as he never imagined possible. He recognizes the wisdom of their unassuming ways, that he has become the person they see him as, that they have opened him to accepting the power of feelings, and that he has learned what it means to live aloha—the quiet ethic that underlies all life in Hawaii.