Claude Weldon (Kevin McCarthy) is the patriarch, who owns the town's paper mill, who is turning the family business over to his son, Skipper (Woody Brown).

After completing her sentence, Lane defiantly returns to town, taking a job with Lute-Mae Sanders (Stella Stevens), the local bordello owner and Constance's secret mother with Claude, and forming a connection with Sam Curtis (John Beck), a construction magnate.

The series picks up where the pilot left off, with Sheriff Titus double-crossing a drug dealing couple, who take revenge by abducting newlyweds Field and Constance, who are honeymooning in the Bahamas.

Meanwhile, Annabelle's mother, Mary Troy (Alice Hirson), comes to town to investigate her daughter's violent death, and the possibility that the Weldon fire was arson.

To save his campaign, Constance blabs unconfirmed information about his opponent, and in the end, Field wins the election and is made a Senator of Florida.

Skipper prepares to leave town to accept a job in New Orleans, but decides to stay after Claude is seriously injured in an accident at the mill.

He then starts dating Christie Kovacs (Denise Galik), a manipulative girl living with her overbearing sister Alice (Marcia Rodd), a mill employee who is secretly in love with Claude.

After an old friend from the circus, Beth McDonald (Sandra Kerns), turns up dead, Lane is kidnapped by the killer Slade (Michael Baseleon).

Ruthless tycoon Michael Tyrone (David Selby) comes to town, and gets into a bidding war with Sam for a piece of waterfront property, and with Claude and Eudora for the barrio.

While she is away, Claude forges her signature to sign the barrio over to Tyrone, who plans on building a casino resort on the property and has Titus evict the Cubans who live there.

They include Julio Sanchez (Fernando Allende), who becomes Constance's lover, and his sister Alicia (Gina Gallego), who falls in love with Skipper.

When Eudora gets wind of her name being forged, Tyrone loses the barrio, in revenge, he buys the local blank and forecloses on Claude's paper mill, making Field the new owner.

Tyronne firmly believed that his father was innocent, despite the endless evidence that pointed to his guilt, and wanted everyone connected to Judge Carlyle and Titus, who was still sheriff at the time, to suffer.

NBC pulled the plug on the show in Spring 1982 with its cliffhanger left unresolved, though reruns aired in the timeslot until mid summer of that year.

68 out of 105 shows, NBC executives planned a half-hour daytime version of the series to debut in September 1982, but this never came to pass [4] despite the fact a bible for a third season had been drafted by producer Jeff Freilich.