Sylvanus Now is a young man of great charm and strength, most at home when fishing the great Newfoundland fishing banks. His world is simple, his desires direct. He wants Adelaide, a fiery beauty from the next village, but Adelaide swore she would never love a fisherman. She hates the sea, the fish, the prying eyes of an isolated 1950s community.



But as their love for each other grows into marriage, the more they seem linked to the rhythms of the sea - a sea that takes as well as gives, something that Sylvanus knows all too well having lost both his brother and father to the depths. Worse is to come. Looming at the edge of the horizon are menacing congregations of giant fishing trawlers that threaten to suck not only fish from the sea but the life from a community.