After being released from prison for accidentally killing his father sixteen years earlier, an emotionally aloof Willie Fulton makes his way for the north country, to isolate himself in the wilds of Canada, determined to live a life of enforced solitude. His plans, however, are interrupted by Lylah Whyte, a precocious, beautiful young woman who has ideas of her own. Together, they will create a family whose individual histories are revealed by way of a number of narrators, each of them telling a part of an overall story that is dramatic and humourous, sad yet triumphant, an examination into the co-existent nature of time and fate. It is a story of hunting and fishing, of drinking and dancing, of youth and age, of family tragedy in the form of a bear attack and a suicide, but, most of all, it is a story of how love, friendship, and familial bonds can weather and overcome anything.