Jimmy persuades the family to take a trip to Monkey Beach to find and photograph the sasquatch.

Uncle Mick unexpectedly appears at the Hill family's door, despite having been presumed dead or imprisoned by the FBI.

Mick drowns at sea, and Al pulls his badly disfigured body from a fishing net.

A violent fight over Mick's belongings ends with Josh breaking his leg and Trudy being evicted; she and Tab leave Kitamaat.

Ma-ma-oo tells Lisa that the little red-haired man is a tree spirit and that Lisa has the family's inherited spiritual gift.

Lisa and her gang forcibly keep Jimmy indoors after she has a premonition of his death, inadvertently helping him avoid the mumps.

Cheese drugs Lisa's drink at a party and rapes her outside the abandoned house.

Ma-ma-oo suffers a stroke and gives Lisa a locket containing a picture of Mick.

Ma-ma-oo accidentally sets her house on fire while frying bacon after her stroke and burns to death inside.

Lisa quits school and moves to Vancouver, spending Ma-ma-oo's inheritance on months of partying with questionable friends.

After returning to Kitamaat, Lisa reunites with Frank, who tells her that Pooch has died by suicide.

Jimmy, who has quit swimming due to a shoulder injury, falls in love with his childhood crush Karaoke.

Lisa finds a note revealing that Karaoke became pregnant by Josh and had an abortion, explaining Jimmy's motivation.

After learning Jimmy's life raft was found empty, Lisa sneaks away alone on the family motorboat toward Namu.

At Monkey Beach, Lisa has a vision of Jimmy attacking Josh with an oar and pushing him overboard as the boat sinks.

Lisa Hill's story is anchored by the mysterious disappearance of her brother Jimmy on a fishing trip, an event that sends her into deep reflection on her past. Her childhood is defined by the arrival of her activist uncle Mick and by her grandmother Ma-ma-oo, who validates her supernatural abilities. After Mick drowns and Ma-ma-oo dies in a house fire, Lisa spirals into aimless partying in Vancouver before returning home to find Jimmy has fallen apart and then disappeared. Piecing together the truth requires Lisa to pay attention to her visions and the voices of the dead. Her solo journey to Monkey Beach finally yields a terrifying vision that reveals what likely happened to her brother.

The headline events that carry Lisa's story from childhood to Monkey Beach.

Six crows speak to Lisa in Haisla, saying 'Go down to the bottom of the ocean,' as the family awaits news of Jimmy.

Mick secretly deposits money in Al's bank account and angrily protests when Revenue Canada demands back taxes from him.

Lisa bites a bully named Frank until he bleeds during a fight; Mick calls her his 'favorite monster in the whole wide world.'

Lisa refuses to read a school book she calls racist and sings a protest song; Mick has the teacher's disciplinary note laminated and framed.

Ma-ma-oo pours whisky on a fire and places Ba-ba-oo's favorite Twinkie in the flames as an offering to honor his spirit.

During a family camping trip at Kemano, Lisa sees a man and a boy standing nearby that Mick claims he cannot see.

On the same camping trip, Mick wakes crying from a nightmare and shouts at Geordie about the horrors of residential school.

At Mick's funeral, his old friend Barry shows Lisa a wedding photograph of Mick and his ex-wife Cookie.

Jimmy secretly takes the family car for a joyride one night; when police bring them home, only Lisa is blamed.

Lisa hides in Jimmy's closet and jumps out wearing a monkey mask in front of his popular friends, deeply embarrassing him.

Ma-ma-oo and Lisa feed a homemade cake to a graveyard fire; Lisa then cuts off her own hair in mourning and burns it.

Tab returns to Kitamaat covered in tattoos and dressed like a biker, and introduces Lisa to marijuana at a holiday party.

Lisa tries a voodoo spell from a book at Pooch's house and then finds a dead crow with a missing wing.

After transferring to Lisa's school following Mick's death, Frank torments Lisa daily and her grades begin to suffer.

Lisa lies on the sand at Monkey Beach, listening to the distant sound of a motorboat.

While Jimmy's disappearance frames the novel, the texture of Lisa's life is woven from dozens of secondary moments that reveal who she is and where she comes from. Her bond with Mick is forged through his political activism and his proud, ironic acceptance of her rebellious spirit. Family rituals, school conflicts, and encounters with the supernatural fill her childhood and teenage years in Kitamaat. Each loss she experiences is surrounded by meaningful smaller moments—offerings to the dead, visions she cannot explain, and small acts of mourning. The pool closes at the very end of the novel with Lisa finally still on the sand of Monkey Beach, listening to the world around her.

The supporting moments and relationships that build Lisa's world.

Mick explains to Lisa that he had been hiding at the Rosebud Reservation after a violent confrontation during an A.I.M. protest.

Tab tells Lisa that Ba-ba-oo was abusive and that Ma-ma-oo sent Mick and Trudy to residential school to protect them from him.

The family's punt boat sinks on the return trip from the Kemano camping expedition.

On Mick's birthday, Lisa and Jimmy visit the Octopus Beds and Lisa releases tobacco into the water to honor his spirit.

The little man visits Lisa during the night; the next day, she learns that Ma-ma-oo has suffered a heart attack.

After Lisa punches a classmate named Lou Ann, Frank unexpectedly befriends her and she joins his gang of boys.

Lisa confronts white men harassing her cousin Erica in Terrace; her father later says he regrets naming her after Mick.

Lisa and Pooch have casual sex; she reflects that he was not in love with her but that it was comforting.

In a Vancouver hotel, Lisa passes out and believes the ghost of Tab is warning her to change her life.

Driving to Pooch's funeral, Lisa believes she sees a B'gwus-like creature leap from the bushes, comforting her that the supernatural still exists.

After returning to Kitamaat, Lisa commits to finishing school and for the first time studies hard to get good grades.

After Karaoke leaves, Lisa takes a despairing Jimmy on a boat camping trip, where he admits he always thought she was weak.

Jimmy and Lisa watch a pod of orcas swim past their stranded boat; Jimmy joyfully dives in to swim alongside them.

Jimmy tells Lisa he is going on a fishing trip with Josh to 'make things right,' without explaining what he means.

The ghost of Ma-ma-oo appears to Lisa at Monkey Beach and warns that her spiritual gift will kill her if she cannot control it.

Beneath the surface of Lisa's life lie a series of turning points that permanently reshape her understanding of herself, her family, and her spiritual gifts. Learning the truth about Ba-ba-oo's abuse, Mick's activist past, and the maternal line of spiritual gift-bearers all reframe her sense of who she is. Her teenage years are punctuated by confrontations, unexpected friendships, and reluctant awakenings to both pleasure and danger. A period of disillusionment in Vancouver ends when she believes a ghost is warning her to change course, sending her home to rebuild her life just as Jimmy's crisis unfolds. Her discovery of a devastating note and a climactic vision at Monkey Beach bring the novel's central mystery into sharp and tragic focus.