Jake is born at the turn of the twentieth century on a small
outport island on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. He is distinguished from
everyone else by a full head of red hair. And to single him out further, Jake
has a pronounced speech impediment. Scorched, abused physically and mentally by
his father for his stuttering tongue and especially for his questionable
parentage, Jake endures. Then still a boy, Jake is found alone in a punt upon
an empty sea, on the fishing grounds without his father, whose fate is suspect.
