The search for a lost portrait of Walt Whitman sends urban historian Dr. Erica Donato into Brooklyn Heights. New York's first suburb has long weathered political battles about neighborhood preservation and destruction. Is a new one shaping up? Erica meets an idol, fiery community activist Louisa Gibbs, now locked in a dispute with the Watch Tower Society. One of Brooklyn's biggest landowners, the Jehovah's Witnesses are selling off their holdings. Then at a glittering party, Erica meets the threatening Prinzig clan who are trying to buy the Witnesses' property adjoining Louisa's historic home. The discovery of the Society's Daniel Towns' body in the Witnesses' underground tunnels reignites old conflicts.

A public meeting becomes a battleground over plans to redevelop the once-proud Brooklyn Navy Yard. Local residents clamor for their own agenda in redeveloping 300 acres overlooking a sparkling downtown Manhattan, while business and real estate experts argue and city officials cower. Erica Donato witnesses the shocking murder of a power-broker that night on the Yard's condemned Admirals' Row. She uncovers the dead man's complicated history with the Yard, his road to wealth and a high-flyer lifestyle. When her daughter, Chris, visits her father's relatives for a family history project, Erica learns that the Donato clan was involved in the Navy Yard's glory days and its slow, politics-ridden death.