Jake Doherty calls himself a mariner. Others describe him as a yachtsman on a tight budget. He intends to sail across the Atlantic to Europe in two months time. On the day the story begins, he rides the wind to a different destination. It is an unpromising evening. His girlfriend breaks up with him, and a strange woman named Mary clobbers him with a roundhouse slap for an unintended insult. He lurches out of the waterfront bar where his luck had turned so sour, and receives another slap in the face from a roaring March gale. Offering no resistance, Jake turns and puts the wind on his back. He drifts across town, unaware that the freezing wind has his fate as well as his body in its grip, and the voyage has already begun. Mary is not violent by nature, just sensitive about certain things. Her world is full of signs and affirmations, a place where even trivial, everyday occurrences carry significance and portent. She is certain that she is possessed, but considers possession a good, positive thing which has aided her in the years since her once promising life fell apart. She wanders the streets of Portland, Maine trying to help those even less fortunate. Jake is drawn in by Mary, enthralled by her perplexing mind and unshakable spirit. Together they navigate the pubs and sidewalks of Portland, forming a bond that Mary feels can only be fate. By the end of May, Jake has set sail and his 35 foot cutter, the Rapparee, is nosing into the long Atlantic swells. He is on his way to Europe, but it is not to be the quiet and lonely voyage of reflection and atonement that he had planned.