Franny affixes tracking devices to the last surviving Arctic terns in Greenland and releases them to migrate.

Franny strikes a deal with fishing captain Ennis Malone to board his vessel the Saghani in exchange for helping him locate fish.

Franny spots two boys trapped in a rowboat during a storm and dives into the water to rescue them, impressing Niall Lynch.

Franny and Niall marry on the same spot where she once heard the story of a woman who turned into a blackbird.

The Saghani crew hauls up a full net of fish but releases the entire catch to free a sea turtle tangled in the netting.

An overloaded net cable snaps and strikes Samuel; Franny revives him using the ship's defibrillator.

The government outlaws commercial fishing entirely, stranding the Saghani and destroying Ennis's livelihood.

A climate protestor attempts to sexually assault Franny; she stabs him in the throat with her pocketknife, killing him.

Franny confesses to the entire Saghani crew that she spent four years in prison for double murder and broke parole to make the voyage.

Basil turns Franny in to police in Argentina; Franny and Ennis steal a yacht called the Sternea Paradisea and escape.

Franny gives birth to a stillborn daughter and abandons Niall, fleeing Galway alone for several months.

Niall ends the marriage after another abandonment; Franny deliberately steers their car into another vehicle, killing Niall and the other driver.

After release from prison, Franny reads Niall's will and learns of his wish to have his ashes scattered where the Arctic terns fly.

Franny and Ennis crest a hill in Antarctica and discover hundreds of terns wheeling above a sea teeming with fish and whales.

Franny wades into the Weddell Sea with Niall's ashes intending to drown, but hears Niall's voice urging her to live and swims back to the surface.

Franny Lynch arrives in Greenland with a secret mission: to follow the last Arctic terns to their migration's end and scatter the ashes of her dead husband, Niall. She boards the fishing vessel Saghani captained by Ennis Malone, and the voyage tests the entire crew against brutal seas, new laws banning commercial fishing, and mounting danger. Across interspersed memories, the reader discovers that Franny married ornithologist Niall Lynch, that their daughter was born dead, and that Franny deliberately crashed their car after Niall ended the marriage, killing both him and an innocent driver. After prison and parole, she has come to sea to fulfill Niall's dying wish — and to end her own life alongside him. The voyage ultimately brings her to a thriving pocket of wildlife in the Weddell Sea, where she walks into the ocean with his ashes but chooses, at the last moment, to survive.

The headline events of Franny's voyage and the tragedy that drove her to it.

As a child, Franny runs away for several days with a boy who told her a story about a woman who turned into a blackbird.

Young Franny is sent to live with her paternal grandmother Edith on a farm after her mother disappears.

Franny attends Professor Niall Lynch's ornithology lecture at the University of Ireland and flees the hall when he displays a taxidermized gull.

Niall appears at Franny's apartment door with university enrollment papers, declaring they will spend the rest of their lives together.

The Saghani docks in Newfoundland and conservation protestors immediately attack the crew on the pier.

Franny bonds with Samuel's six daughters at his family home, especially the youngest, Ferd, who is the age her own daughter would have been.

On their wedding night, Franny tries to strangle Niall in her sleep and begins secretly tying her wrists to the bed each night.

Franny and Niall visit John Torpey, who admits he is Franny's maternal grandfather and that he abandoned Iris believing she was another man's child.

Franny breaks into Edith's locked box and discovers her father Dominic Stewart is serving a life sentence for strangling a man to death.

Franny sleepwalks to Penny's greenhouse in the night and opens all the cages, freeing Penny's collection of exotic birds.

Niall gently tells Franny he has found information about her mother, prompting Franny to suddenly remember that Iris died by suicide.

A police boat arrives in Argentina and Léa walks to the gangplank, slips, and suffers a serious head injury in the chaotic confrontation.

Franny and Niall join the MER conservation society in Scotland, where Niall argues furiously against the conservationists' plan to cage and retrain Arctic terns.

After the tracker signal is lost, Franny guides Ennis toward the Weddell Sea on foot, walking three days across ice from the Amundsen Sea.

Franny is released from prison a second time and finds her father Dominic waiting outside; she tentatively asks him to come with her to Scotland.

This pool follows the events that built the world Franny carries with her aboard the Saghani. Her restlessness begins in childhood, when running away costs her a mother and earns her a cold life with her grandmother Edith. As a young woman she is drawn into Niall's orbit through his passion for birds, and their bond grows through shared wonder at the natural world. The Saghani voyage brings its own secondary drama: violence at the Newfoundland docks, a near-fatal confrontation with police, and the unlikely tenderness Franny finds among Samuel's family. In the past timeline, family secrets surface through lockboxes and distant relatives, and a devastating revelation about Iris's fate drives Franny from Galway once more. The pool ends at the novel's close, with Franny stepping out of prison to find her long-absent father waiting — and the possibility of a new beginning.

The formative moments and supporting scenes that shaped Franny's journey.

Franny dives into a freezing Greenland fjord to save a man she believes is drowning, only to learn he was never in danger.

A detective enters a waiting room at the Galway Garda station and tells Franny 'they're dead.'

Franny returns to Galway as a young adult to search for her mother and takes a job as a janitor at the University of Ireland to pay rent.

Franny steps inside the bird cage at Niall's family home and shares her first kiss with him as he proposes they get married.

The tracker light on Franny's favorite tern goes dark during a violent storm, confirming the bird has drowned at sea.

Franny realizes she and Ennis share a destructive compulsion that has repeatedly hurt the people who love them most.

Franny strips off her clothes and plunges into the sea beside Samuel's family home, overwhelmed by grief for everything she has lost.

At a university faculty party, Franny understands for the first time that loving Niall has given her a responsibility she has never felt before.

Niall takes Franny out on a small boat at night to watch a flock of Arctic terns wheeling in the sky, silently accepting her need to migrate.

Niall asks Franny whether she can remember what really happened to her mother; Franny suddenly recalls finding Iris's body after her suicide.

Franny wanders alone through Yellowstone after her daughter's stillbirth until Niall calls and tells her he cannot endure another abandonment.

After her parole, Franny finds a private journal Niall kept about her long before they were married, containing the entry 'I wait, always.'

Aboard the Sternea Paradisea, Franny privately releases the terns from the burden of surviving for her sake, accepting they are likely dead.

Standing before the thriving Weddell Sea, Ennis tells Franny he stopped wanting to catch the fish a long time ago.

A rescue helicopter pulls Franny from the Weddell Sea and she is subsequently sentenced to six additional years in prison for breaking parole.

This pool traces the inner architecture of Franny's story — the moments of recognition, rupture, and hard-won acceptance that change who she is. From the Greenland fjord where she courts death before the voyage even begins, to the Garda station where a detective confirms her worst outcome, the early chapters establish a woman haunted by things she refuses to remember. The middle sections reveal how love destabilized her: a kiss in a cage that foreshadowed captivity, a faculty party where she first felt the weight of belonging, and a night on the water when Niall showed her it was safe to fly and return. The final act collapses her defenses entirely — she surrenders her last hope for the terns, reads words that prove she was always loved, and enters the ocean one final time to choose whether to live. Her survival is the novel's turning point, and her sentencing the price she willingly pays.

The discoveries, confrontations, and emotional breaks that define Franny's transformation.