Story Overview.
While still grieving the long-ago death of their son, a couple suddenly finds themselves adrift in a floating house on stormy seas. In their struggles to survive, they learn how to move past their grief and win a second chance to live their dream.
The Story
The Grapes family, Harold, Mary Rose, and their son Dylan, for years dreamed of sailing away from their remote island homeland to explore the world. And so, they spent every free moment hard at work building a seaworthy craft with which to sail the seven seas.
Late one night, when Harold and Dylan are sailing home from the shipyard, they find themselves caught in a gale-force storm. The intensity of the storm is too much for their little fishing boat. It isn’t long before father and son find themselves underwater and in danger of drowning. Harold surfaces, and gasping for breath, looks frantically about for Dylan. Seeing no sign of the boy, Harold dives back under the water again and again, until his strength is all but exhausted. In the end all he has to show for the effort is a glass bottle Dylan had used to collect fireflies.
That fateful night, the light of Harold and Mary Rose’s life went out. They abandon their dream and use their half-built ship as the foundation for a house they constructed on a cliff overlooking the sea that is now seen as the source of their enduring loss and pain.
Thirty-five years later, Harold and Mary Rose, are living a monotonous life caring for their garden and building tiny replicas of boats within glass bottles. With the passing of time, the cliff has eroded to the point that the village City Hall Inspector finds it necessary to condemn the property.
The night before their eviction deadline, while Harold and Mary Rose sleep, a violent storm strikes the island. A lightning bolt uproots the house that had begun as a boat, and tosses it into the sea.
Upon awakening, they are shocked to find themselves adrift in the middle of the ocean.
With no way to navigate, and water leaking in from every side, the house is anything but seaworthy. Harold and Mary Rose find themselves in a life-or-death race against time, battling to survive, not only the brutal elements but the unbridled ghosts from their past as well.
The temperatures fall sharply, and magical lights begin to appear in the sky as an indication of the uncertain destination they are heading to.
Their floating house drifts into icy waters, and it is not long before Harold and Mary Rose find they are trapped between huge blocks of ice.
Harold and Mary Rose spot a plume of smoke in the distant sky. Starving and on the verge of freezing to death, they set off on foot across the snow-covered, frozen terrain, hoping the smoke marks a human presence. In short, they’re exhausted and caught in a snowstorm. By sheer luck, an Inuit girl named Kirima stumbles upon the couple and escorts them to the safety of her tribe’s camp.
Over time, Harold and Mary Rose recover from their ordeal and are accepted into the Inuit community. Naturally, they have a special connection with young Kirima, who in a sense fills the void left so long ago by the death of their own child.
Kirima’s father tells Harold and Mary Rose that with the coming spring thaw, a passage will open that will allow them to return to their people and their old life. The couple prepares for the journey, but it’s a half-hearted effort.
Tragedy strikes once more when Kirima drowns in an ice fishing accident. Old wounds are opened, but Harold and Mary Rose learn an important lesson when they observe how Kirima’s parents deal with their grief.
Just as the ice that for so many months anchored their ship in place begins to melt, the blame and regret that had for so long anchored the couple’s lives, melts away.
Rather than take advantage of the passage that would take them back to their old lives, with renewed spirits, Harold and Mary Rose return to their ship that was once a house and set sail to finally live out their fondest dream.
