J. W. Jackson has much to be thankful for this particular August: the early arrival of bluefish, certainly, but also beautiful wife Zee and an addition to their family, three-month-old Joshua, who screams loudly and looks like a cross between Edward G. Robinson and Winston Churchill. Life is good, except for the intrusion of several outsiders from "America. " Perhaps it's just as well that a distraction arrives in the person of one Lawrence Ingalls, a biologist for the State Department of Environmental Protection. J. W. and Ingalls disagree on just about everything: the environment, the Vineyard, and the people who live there. It's three summers now since Ingalls launched the Plover Wars, banning off-road vehicles from one of J. W. 's favorite fishing beaches so that some endangered birds could nest. Tempers have flared. Talk has escalated into violence. J. W. 's in the middle of it all.