

One day, while surfing, John meets Savannah Lynn Curtis, a student in town working on a Habitat for Humanity project with other students from Chapel Hill, when he dives into the ocean to retrieve Savannah’s purse that fell from the dock. After a few years of hanging aimlessly around Wilmington, he decides to join the Army. After John tells him as an angry teenager that he never wants to hear about coins again, they have little to discuss. His father, a single parent with deeply ingrained routines and a love for coins, usually keeps to himself and his ways.

However, John and his father could not be more different. Stationed in Germany, he spends his leave with his father. Twenty-three-year-old John Tyree is back in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, on his annual two-week leave from the Army.
