When the unfaithful wife of Koule, a thirty-six-year-old third-rate journalist, pays for her mistakes as she deserves, he is violently uprooted from the mediocrity of everyday life. With his two daughters, he retreats to his ancestral home, somewhere on the bare but beautiful shores of Newfoundland, where numerous local characters participate in the drama of his struggle for survival, in various roles. And while the three generations of his family pave the way for a new life, Koule, battling his personal demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - finally begins to see the possibility of a love free from pain and degradation. "The Shipping News," like a rough, gloomy, comic and magical portrait of the modern American family, proves why Annie E. Proulx is recognized today as one of America's most gifted and original writers.