Augie van Meer believes he can dream a new life into reality.

It’s 1974, and the struggling actor empties his bank account to rent a carriage house in Newport, RI for the summer. His goal: to marry an heiress by Labor Day.

Armed with movie-star looks and a big dose of positive thinking, Augie stumbles through the manicured world of Gilded Age cottages, private clubs, and codes he can’t quite crack. But once Daphne Moorecourt, the temperamental daughter of one of Newport’s most prominent families, falls for him, Augie is on his way.

Augie fends off rivals, dodges questions about his past, and resists the overtures of a troubled beauty. He takes sailing lessons from Erin Reilly, the sharp-minded, feminist daughter of Irish immigrants who is preoccupied with unravelling a mystery in her own family.

A single sailing trip changes everything.

Against the backdrop of Newport’s transformation from a rundown port with a storied past to a bustling tourist town, Augie and his peers are forced to confront the cost of survival in a bubble of privilege, and to decide who really creates the American dream and who merely inherits a story.