Swans are endangered in 1920s Alaska yet Dawn plans to see the fall migration. In their seaport town, her mother’s hat can decoy poachers.
Unbeknown to the adolescent Dawn, her grandfather has shot an old swan out of mercy – or for money. In the coastal Alaskan harbor town where she lives, her father buys the swan pelt, preventing her Uncle Alex, a fur trader, from selling it for export. Dawn’s father surprises her part-Aleut mother with a hat she helped to make from the pelt and also with an idea to catch possible poachers. Shooting swans has become illegal but Alaska is a territory and Prohibition has occupied the Sheriff. Dawn becomes involved with the suspicious effects of the swan bonnet besides its haunting effect on her mother.
Since Dawn’s grandparents see the swans first when they land, Dawn agrees to secretly watch the migration with the Deputy Sheriff’s son. On the day of the migration though, she encounters a girl from a ship and, finding out about a hunting party, rides to the inlet bay with her mother. A few townspeople are roving the shore too but who is the vigilante and who is the poacher?
Chapters from the revised version are now posted. It is complete at about 50,000 words.