This is a richly imagined story about love, loss, and the heartbreaking compromises-both personal and political-that undermine lives. At the turn of the nineteenth century, naval officer David Buchan arrives in the Bay of Exploits with orders to establish contact with the Beothuk or Red Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland, who are facing extinction. When Buchan approaches the area's most influential white settlers, the Peytons, for assistance, he enters a shadowy world of allegiances and old grudges that he can only dimly apprehend.
