The religious element of the novel applies to the Steeds, who are Roman Catholic and the Paxmores who are Quakers (Michener himself was raised a Quaker by his adopted mother). The novel has a number of central themes, such as religion, slavery, poverty, and industry, each personified by a particular family that settles on the Bay, and in some cases, by several families. in the 1680s it is the oldest Quaker meeting house in the United States (see List of the oldest churches in the United States). The Quaker Meeting House that Michener places in Patamoke in the novel is based upon the Third Haven Meeting House, built in Easton, Md. The town of Patamoke lies on a fictitious promontory on the Choptank opposite Cambridge. The location of Devon Island would be immediately north of Todds Point, approximately 3 miles southeast of the southern tip of Tilghman Island. All of these locations were placed by the open water of the Choptank. Michener developed four fictional pieces of land in Maryland to build the locations of his novel: Patamoke and The Neck The Turlock Marsh Peace Cliff and Devon Island on which Rosalind's Revenge was built. Most of the events of the novel take place on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and, more specifically, on and around the Choptank River. The first part provides a key date and describes the background behind the arrival of a person or thing (i.e., a family of Canada geese in Voyage Eight and floodwaters in Voyage Eleven) to the Delmarva Peninsula area, while the second section provides a thematic name and describes how the new arrivals interact with places and the people already settled in the area. The book is divided into 14 separate chapters with two sections each. It starts in 1583 with American Indian tribes warring, moves with English settlers through the 17th century (land appropriation, tobacco farming, indentured servitude, religious persecution, etc.), slavery, pirate attacks, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Emancipation and attempted assimilation, to the final major event being the Watergate scandal of 1972-1974.

The story-line, like much of Michener's work, depicts a number of characters within family groups over a long time period, richly illustrating the history of the area through these families' timelines. The story deals with several families living in the Chesapeake Bay area around Virginia and Maryland, from 1583 to 1978. Michener, published by Random House in 1978.

James michener's the source