From the decks of off-shore scallop boats in the North Atlantic to the backwoods of the Maritime Provinces, Feather White chronicles a young man's emergence from an alcoholic family and his search for his missing pieces.

His quest leads to building a hand-made log cabin in Nova Scotia in 1974 during what was still the height of the back-to-nature movement of the 60s. Throughout the province there were enclaves of young people beyond the power lines in pursuit of a better life, building cabins and learning the old ways from elderly neighbors and farmers.

On his way to pick apples to finance a cabin winter during fall of 1977, the author instead finds himself aboard a fishing vessel in one of the east coast's most beautiful and quirky ports, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The memoir charts the excruciating journey from ostracized half-share greenhorn to respected crew member. It relates several death-cheating experiences at sea, alcohol-clouded misadventures of rowdy crew, and how he used dogged determination and humor to succeed when many around him wanted nothing but failure.

Battling storms, both at sea and of the human variety, learning a perilous trade and finding solace by a crackling fire in a remote cabin, he must make peace with what drove him there.