Edith Iglauer was born and lived in the USA until her writing career took her to live in Vancouver sometime in the 1970s. A friend asked her to look up an old friend, John Daly, a commercial fisherman who lived on the Sunshine Coast, north of Vancouver. Edith did and it was apparently an instant attraction. Although this isn't a love story, their love for each other shines through the description of spending a summer aboard the MoreKelp which John continued to earn his living fishing, mostly for salmon. Much of his fishing took place north of Vancouver Island but south of the Queen Charlottes. The weather could be fine or the weather could be fogbound but John fished regardless. His decades of experience enabled him to "think like a fish". But it was still hard work and John was not a young man. Edith learned to love the fishing life and helped where she could but the hard work of fishing was all John's.

Edith and John were only together four years before his death but probably they were the best years for each of them. After John's death Edith sold the MoreKelp but stayed in BC. As she says on the last page:
When John died, I thought of course I would return to the United States to live, but it was too late. I had come too far in another direction. With the new pair of eyes that John had given me, I could not go back to what I had been before.

Edith is still alive and writing according to her website. A movie starring Jaclyn Smith and Tim Matheson was made of this book but it was renamed Navigating the Heart. ( )