Liam Campbell has lost more than most men lose in a lifetime: his wife and young son are dead and his career is in a deep freeze since five people died on his watch. Demoted from sergeant to trooper, exiled to Newenham, he lives on a leaky gillnetter moored in Bristol Bay, brooding on how to rekindle his relationship with bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard, who broke his heart long ago. Then word arrives that a fishing boat is adrift, victim of a fire. Flying out with Trooper Diana Prince, his new assistant and pilot, Liam arrives to find the horribly burned bodies of a family of local fishers and their crew. A terrible accident, or a cover-up of something worse?