Each summer, Carolyn McGrath leaves her home and husband to live alone in her log cabin on a small island in Canada. Her only companions are two dogs, abundant wildlife, and the ghost of her father, who died and left the island to her when she was seventeen. During the summer of 2001, she challenges her husband's claim that her need for solitude renders her strange, recounting stories of many women who have immersed themselves in isolation in order to explore the natural world. McGrath senses that she's one person while alone on her island, and quite another out in the world. Her island self remains separate from the one who visits her dying mother in a nursing home. While she had always adored her father, taking from him her love for the lake and for the people who've made their lives there, she struggles to reconcile those feelings with the way he entered into this wilderness to kill the wild creatures with whom she shares her island home. This leads her to a humbling discovery.