Rowan Hanson learns to be independent at an early age. Her mother dies in childbirth, she is raised in a floating logging camp by her grandmother, she makes her own way working for the SPCA and BC Ferries. When she gets involved with Jim, she refuses to get involved with "the ex, the kids, the house, the car, the boat or the lawyer who's apt to wind up with it all, anyway." But in the end Rowan has to take the advice her grandmother gave her twenty years earlier: "When it's your turn to take your kick at the can, kiddo, you do 'er."