It's 1847, "Black '47," and 100,000 Irish emigrants are fleeing to North America to escape starvation. When a bloated body washes up on Lake Ontario shore near his home, Thaddeus Lewis is sent on a journey that takes him into the heart of disaster. Kellough competently transports the reader back to the days when transport between Southern Ontario towns was tedious, communication was worse, and the suffering Irish were struggling to make a place for themselves in 19th-century Canada.