Jack McKnight, Captain of the Emma Dawn, a Prince William Sound purse seiner, wants what any twenty-five-year-old Alaskan commercial fisherman wants; a family, a state of the art boat, a cult following, and an engineering firm. March 24th, 1989, a month after Jack invests his life savings into his dream boat, he awakens to the news that the Exxon Valdez has fetched hard ashore Bligh Reef and is spewing crude oil into the pristine waters of the Prince William Sound. Jack is enraged but has learned to channel his anger, wrath, and a will to do violence, into more productive emotions - after a bit of therapeutic venting. His Father and Uncle, who bought boats the same time as Jack, have no interest in such control. They want revenge, hot, smoky, smelling of singed flesh and bullet seared blood. With every order of his life delegated to apt partners that he might focus on saving his livelihood in Cordova, Jack quickly turns his mind from enraged victim, to peace keeper and opportunist. He returns to Cordova and begins the battle to hold his fishing operation together, heal Prince William Sound and, somehow, come out on top.