An extraordinary stone city rises from a Pacific lagoon, its walls built from basalt too heavy for one man to move and a purpose no single ruler can explain.

Keli is a young worker who understands only what his hands can measure: water, rope, stone, and tide. Beside his uncle, he learns to read the water and the weight of the work. But as the city grows, so does the danger closing in around it, and Keli must decide what he is willing to carry and what he cannot save.

Grounded in the real history of Nan Madol and the traditions of its rise and fall, this is an immersive historical novel about the people history forgot to name and what remains when the hands that built something are gone