Finn lives in a small fishing village, and he loves his simple, rough-and-tumble life: listening to the gulls, savouring the salty smells of the market and setting fishing lines in the early morning. But when he befriends the Finer family, outsiders in an otherwise close-knit community, the bonds of friendship and familial loyalty are tested. Finn learns a difficult lesson about the hidden past of the adults around him, but he also teaches the town a lesson of his own. This thoughtfully written, fast-paced novel has a powerful sense of place and of the ways in which friendships and loyalties are forged. The atmospheric illustrations include maps of Finn's village, which is based on the author's childhood home in Spurn Point, at the mouth of the River Humber in Yorkshire.