Leon Cromwell is camping in the Seney National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he and his friend Trevor Hadley are birdwatching. Two sisters float by in their canoe, and, later, one of them, Margaret Thibedeau, dramatically alters his solitary and sometimes lonely existence.

When his path later crosses the Hulett clan, a family which lives both inside and outside the law, his life changes yet again, and his safe and predictable little world is shaken forever.

These two chance and completely accidental meetings combine to form the plot of this story of ordinary people whose ordinary activities spawn an extraordinary tale.