A professor at a Midwestern university awakes every morning at 4:00 am, plagued by the echoes of his past. He grew up in Nova Scotia on the coast, in a small fishing village. His father fished on the family boat the Jenny Lynn _while his mother raised him and his six sisters, of which the professor was the youngest. They lived a traditional lifestyle, the boy's mother doing all the cooking and hand-making most of their clothes. The only messy room in the house was their father's, as it was covered in books and magazines. The mother, who was a proud and practical woman, thought reading was a foolish waste of time. One by one, the boy's older sisters would wander into their father's room and discover reading, becoming entranced. This inspired them to work at a tourist restaurant during the summers, of which their mother disapproved. Once, the older sisters convinced their father to take some tourists out on his boat. He stayed out singing and drinking with them, becoming something of a Hemingway figure to them. As the boy's sisters grew older, they eventually all married people from the restaurant and moved out of the fishing town. Soon, the once-busy house grew quiet. The boy was alone with his parents. Shortly after this, his father suddenly grew sick and feeble. This was right before lobster season. To prepare, the boy had to help his mother and uncle get the equipment ready. Running out of time, the boy decided he would stop going to school. His father, however, told him not to. The next day, his father pulled himself out of bed and made it in time for lobster season. Then the boy's uncle, who had been his father's partner on the _Jenny Lynn, let them know that he was expecting a thirteenth child and had accepted a job on a different boat, worried that the boy's father was getting too old and might not be reliable much longer. So during the summer, the boy joins his father on the boat and fishes with him, and continues through the fall, not going to school. One night, he tells his son that he had never wanted to be a fisherman. In November of that year, in the midst of a bad snowstorm, the father goes overboard and gets lost at sea. He is found dead a week later. The boy goes back to school and follows his passion, and then leaves Nova Scotia like his sisters before him. He feels guilty about leaving his mother alone, but she is too proud to accept any aid other than her current insurance policy. She loves the sea more than her children who left her. The boy, now a professor, remains traumatized by his father's death at sea.