Leo Bronski, an alcoholic Vietnam vet, is on shaky ground with his employer, the U. S. Postal Service in Anchorage. He is sent to a "dry" Western Alaska village as temporary postmaster. He soon learns that his job duties include solving the mystery of the previous postmaster's death.
Ron Hess has lived in Alaska almost 30 years. Twenty of those years have been spent in Homer, that cosmic village by the sea. Originally, a bred and born Kansan, Ron and his family have lived all the way from Florida to Alaska with a few Midwest stops. In his real work life he was a computer field engineer for a large computer company, which he quit after 24 years. As he says, "The boys were gone and my wife, Marilyn, had a secure job working for the U.S. Postal Service. The way was open for me to activate my muse, which had always been whispering in my ear.""