In Washington State, a widowed doctor suffering from cancer takes a hunting trip, the real purpose of which is to commit suicide, which he will masquerade as an accident. But Dr. Ben Givens' resolve is tested by several events which reaffirm the joy of living--he cheats death by fighting off wolves and helps a girl give birth.

When a woman is shot to death by a deer hunter on an island off the coast of Maine, the case seems open and shut to newly promoted Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch. But as soon as he arrives on remote Maquoit Island, the hunter claims he didn't fire the fatal shot-- and the ballistic evidence proves he's telling the truth. Who killed Ariel Evans, an author writing a book about the island's notorious hermit? The next day the dead woman herself steps...