After evading death while trying to save Alberta's breathtaking Cardinal Divide from the threat of coal mining, Cole Blackwater learns that his good friend and former client Archie Ravenwing is presumed dead in the shadowy depths of British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago. Days before his disappearance, Ravenwing was on the brink of unravelling a corporate conspiracy surrounding an outbreak of sea lice that could decimate the wild salmon population along the BC coastline. While Cole and newspaper reporter Nancy Webber search for answers, Cole is haunted by the dark secret surrounding his own father's mysterious death. For Nancy, whose complicated feelings for Cole have resurfaced, getting to the bottom of his family history becomes both a professional and personal obsession.