When Dick O'Gorman and Billy Kilroy choose Paradise Beach, New Jersey as the ideal place to smuggle Cuban missiles for the IRA, they don't anticipate the upheaval into which the community will be thrown. Irish Americans, preoccupied by their loss of political power in the cities, have little sympathy for Ireland or the IRA. This is especially true of Patrolman Mike O'Day, an ex-Marine haunted by his moral failure in Vietnam. Worsening his inner torment, the beautiful Vietnamese woman who seduced him into betraying his own men is living as a refugee in Paradise Beach. The final element in this combustible mix is a British secret agent disguised as a priest, who, sowing raging suspicion between the IRA men and the Irish Americans, ignites a spiritual and physical explosion that tears the community apart.