It's 1922 at Far Cry Cannery, a quarter-mile of boardwalk and wooden buildings strung along the rocks of Rivers Inlet on the northwest coast of British Columbia. The time has come for Anders Viken, storekeeper and honorary uncle to the recently orphaned Kit, to give an account of his secret self—from his first home in Norway, another land of islands and fjords, to his escape from his family's loving grip, to his wide-open years of rough living, and, lastly, to his dream of love—laughable, given who it is he loves. As the sockeye flood up the inlet, Anders sets all his secrets down for 18-year-old Kit, the only member of his chosen family he has left after her mother, Bobby, ran off, and her father, Frank, was found drowned near the cannery pier. As Anders does his reckoning (more confession than anything, given what he knows about what happened to her parents), Kit works on surviving, fending off the attentions of the cannery manager. Pushed into the adult world by her father's death and her mother's betrayal, the only thing Kit can think to do to earn her way is fish. Oars of her skiff in hand, she glides out into open waters, over the great returning school, and casts her net. This, at least, makes sense to her, as opposed to the convoluted, even tortured, workings of love.