A burned-out New York lawyer's vacation in the Canadian wilderness takes a troubled detour in this novel by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Main Street.

Lawyer Frank Prescott is exhausted. The forty-year-old bachelor works late into the night, poring over documents. When he sleeps, he wakes up in a panic. Not even a round of golf at his country club or a Broadway show helps calm him down. He just wants to escape the city and feel as though he can breathe again. So, when his fellow club member, E. Wesson Woodbury, invites him along on a canoeing and fishing trip in Saskatchewan, Prescott gladly accepts.

However, nothing about the excursion is relaxing. As the journey begins, tensions mount and tempers flare between Prescott and Woodbury. When they meet the rugged Joe Easter, a Canadian trading company owner, the man welcomes Prescott to fish at his home in Mantrap Landing. Prescott is happy to join him. But between Easter's lonely wife, unrest among the area's indigenous Cree tribes, and a dangerous race down the rapids, getting back home safely will be the only thing that can calm Frank Prescott's nerves . . .