Pearl River was part of a royal land patent issued to two New York businessmen, Daniel Honan and Michael Hawdon. Honan, the accountant general of New Amsterdam, and Hawdon, a friend of the infamous Captain Kidd. Immigrants later settled in areas they called Nauraushaun, Middletown, Pascack, Sickletown, Orangeville, and Muddy Brook. In the 1870s, Julius Braunsdorf permitted the New York & New Jersey Railroad to run an extension through his property, which gave his new sewing machine factory access to markets and materials. The factory would later be enhanced to produce the first newspaper-folding machines. In 1906, Dr. Ernst Lederle, a former New York health commissioner, began a laboratory to produce antitoxins and other medicines. With the success and growth of these inventors and their businesses, Pearl River became a nationally known company town. Since the opening of the Tappan Zee Bridge, it has evolved into a friendly, modern bedroom community of New York City and the second-largest hamlet in New York State.

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Nick Davis is a thirty-eight-year-old auto mechanic right outside of Washington DC, in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, who begins an affair with a congressman's wife. They make two mistakes. First they fall in love, and second they get caught by Congressman Daniel Sellers who will not let an affair ruin his blind ambition to become a US Senator in the next election. Nick survives a murder attempt by Sellers' cronies, and spends time in hiding trying to find irrefutable proof, when he realized he is actually in the middle of a giant scheme by Sellers and his crew to manipulate the entire US economy by staging a fake terror plot. He is now tasked with bringing everyone to justice without getting things pinned on him. With enough sleuthing and intrigue to keep any mind busy, he uncovers the seedy underworld of government corruption, obfuscation, and cover up of the truth, pitting the criminals against each other, while he makes their entire operation implode on itself.

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