On an icy evening in December, Kimberley Jamieson’s world is shattered by a careless drunk driver who skids into her mother’s car. In the three months since the accident, Kim has turned away from her old pursuits — she quit swimming, then the orchestra, and now she’s even skipping school. Kim’s father is no help either; a policeman constantly on call, he cannot spare a moment to listen. The road to recovery seems endless.

Slowly, Kim does get back in step with the help of her friends. Mike, a gangly sleuth for the local paper is hot on the trail of a breaking story involving a runaway boy, a scoop which even makes the pages of the Vancouver Sun! Even Sylvia, a friend of her mother’s recently returned to Ladner, draws Kim out of her own world and helps her to heal.

Slowly … step by step … Kim finds that life can go on, that she can revisit the local sites she shared with her mother — the dike paths along the river and the Reifel bird sanctuary.