The next morning, Quoyle wakes up hungover in an inn room, his jacket torn and his car missing. He takes a taxi to Nutbeem’s trailer, which is damaged and surrounded by empty bottles. His station wagon is there, also dented. At the Buggit house, Beety expresses disappointment in Quoyle’s behavior and informs him that the men who sank the boat are now trying to raise it. Quoyle’s daughters are sick with colds, and Beety asks him to watch them the following afternoon. He mentions needing a new place to live now that Nutbeem’s trailer is unavailable, and she suggests a house owned by the Burke family that is for rent.

Quoyle drives to his ancestral house on the point to retrieve his remaining belongings. Inside, he finds lengths of knotted twine laid on the threshold of each room. Enraged and suspecting his elderly cousin, Nolan, of leaving them there again, Quoyle drives to the abandoned village of Capsize Cove. He finds Nolan in a squalid hut, looking gaunt and disturbed but bearing a clear family resemblance. When Quoyle drops the knotted strings on the floor, Nolan snatches them and throws them into the stove.

Still hungover, Quoyle goes to Alvin Yark’s workshop to help build his boat. Yark is working on the boat’s keel and tells stories while Quoyle assists with the heavy lifting. Later, Quoyle goes to Nutbeem’s trailer and finds Nutbeem with Dennis Buggit and Billy Pretty. The attempt to raise the Borogove failed; a bulldozer tore the cabin off, and a diver then put a cable under the hull to drag it to shore, but the boat broke in half in the process, and the pieces have drifted away. Nutbeem announces a change of plans: Instead of sailing, he will fly to Brazil. As snow begins to fall, Billy tells Quoyle that the trailer’s owners will no longer rent it to a newspaperman.

As winter sets in and the bay freezes, Tert Card takes Quoyle for a drink at a bar called the Heavy Weather. Quoyle has moved his family into the comfortable Burke house. At the bar, Tert reveals he is leaving Killick-Claw for a job in St. John’s; his wife will stay behind, which he accepts, believing her role is to maintain their home. He warns Quoyle that Jack plans to have Billy take over his role and predicts Quoyle will be moved to “women’s stuff” with a new hire for the shipping news.

The town holds a Christmas pageant, which sees members of the community performing their talents. Benny Fudge sings, and Bunny and Marty perform a haunting song Quoyle recognizes from one of Nutbeem’s tapes. Wavey plays the accordion while Herry tap-dances. The main act is Beety, who tells a long, hilarious story about Billy Pretty carrying a grandfather clock down an icy hill. A few days later, Quoyle and Wavey exchange Christmas gifts. He gives her a teapot and scarf, and she gives him a hand-knitted sweater that fits perfectly, a gesture that contrasts sharply with his memory of the only gift Petal ever gave him: two raw eggs.

The Saturday after Christmas, Quoyle and Dennis are cutting firewood when they decide to check on Nolan in Capsize Cove. They find him starving in his freezing, filthy shack. His sheep are frozen dead in their pen. Dennis says Nolan must be put in a home and that Quoyle, as his kin, must handle it. Dennis also reveals that Beety and Wavey can help him look for a home for Nolan, using their connections after they founded a local women’s shelter.

In January, Jack Buggit drives Quoyle to the printer in Misky Bay and promotes him to managing editor of the Gammy Bird. Quoyle will take over Tert Card’s duties, while Billy Pretty will expand the home section into a “Lifestyles” page and Benny Fudge will cover court reports and car wrecks. Quoyle will continue writing the “Shipping News.”

At the office, Benny Fudge submits his first stories. His reports on sexual assault cases are terse and factual, but his accounts of other crimes are detailed and enthusiastic. Quoyle settles into his new role, running the newspaper’s production. He mails a copy of the new masthead, featuring his name as managing editor, to Partridge. He also forwards a police bulletin to Agnis, informing her that Silver Melville, who eloped with the steward from the Tough Baby after murdering her husband, Bayonet, has been captured in Hawaii.

Quoyle prepares to help Jack gut cod when his friend Partridge calls from the United States. Partridge is distraught over a shooting at their old newspaper office, where a man killed several employees after they rejected his letter to the editor. The news emphasizes the sense of escalating violence in the United States.

Quoyle joins Jack on his fishing stage, and they talk while they work. Quoyle relays the news about Partridge’s call and a local rumor about fish plant closures. Jack laments the collapse of the local fishing industry, which has been devastated by overfishing and is now controlled by regulations made by distant officials.

Later, Quoyle receives official papers to have Nolan admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Unwilling to sign, he decides to visit him in St. John’s and asks Wavey to accompany him. In the city, Wavey shops while Quoyle goes to the psychiatric hospital. Nolan appears clean and lucid, claiming he only pretends to have a mental illness to enjoy the institution’s comforts. He then reveals a dark family secret: Quoyle’s father, Guy, sexually abused his own sister, Agnis, when they were young, and Nolan’s wife boiled roots into a tea and gave it to Agnis to help her terminate her pregnancy.

Horrified, Quoyle leaves. That evening, he and Wavey have a romantic dinner, which ends with them returning to their hotel and sleeping together. The next morning, Quoyle learns that Nolan experienced a violent episode after his visit and cannot be seen.

Bunny is suspended from school for pushing a teacher, Mrs. Lumbull. Quoyle soon learns that Bunny was defending Herry, whom Mrs. Lumbull had been tormenting. Agnis returns from St. John’s, and together they resolve the issue with the principal; Bunny apologizes, though it is made easier by the fact that Mrs. Lumbull is leaving town.

At Alvin Yark’s shop, Yark asks Quoyle when he and Wavey plan to marry. Quoyle hesitates, claiming Wavey is still devoted to her late husband, Herold. Yark dismisses this, revealing that Herold was a notorious womanizer who made Wavey miserable.

Wavey brings Quoyle a seal flipper pie and leaves. Later that night, after Quoyle has finished the entire pie, she returns breathless and stays. In the following days, they confide in each other about their painful pasts. Quoyle admits he thinks he loved Petal because she was “no good,” and Wavey confesses she felt the same way about Herold, as though his poor treatment was all she deserved.

One afternoon, Quoyle and his family have a picnic with Jack, grilling herring on the shore. Bunny finds a small, dead bird. As they prepare for lobster season, Jack shows Quoyle the heavy stones used to weigh down the traps, which he calls “slingstones.”

Alvin Yark finishes the frame of Quoyle’s boat. As they leave the workshop, they see a “weather light” (a ball of blue fire on the water), which Yark says is a sign of a coming storm. That evening, Agnis’s welcome-home party is in full swing at Quoyle’s house. Bunny pulls Quoyle upstairs to show him a surprise: Wavey has given her a white husky puppy. Bunny names her Warren the Second and declares her intention to become a dog-team racer. Overjoyed, Quoyle goes downstairs and kisses Wavey in front of all the guests.

The party breaks up as the massive storm hits. That night, Bunny has a terrifying, vivid nightmare in which she watches the old green house on Quoyle’s Point get ripped from its foundation and swept into the sea. Shortly after the storm, Wavey’s father, Archie, looks through his binoculars and tells Quoyle he believes the house is gone. Quoyle and Dennis go by snowmobile to confirm it: The house has vanished, leaving only the snapped cables bolted to the rock. Agnis is initially upset but quickly rallies, revealing she had insurance and now plans to buy her shop building with a business partner, Mavis Bangs.

With his new boat finished, Quoyle joins Dennis and Beety for dinner. Dennis is agitated, worried about his lack of work and considering a move to Toronto. Late that night, Dennis calls: His father, Jack, went to set lobster traps and has not returned. An hour later, he calls again to say Jack has been found drowned, his foot tangled in a “slingstone” line from one of his traps.

The town is devastated. Billy Pretty reports that Jack was found upside down under his skiff, his hand jammed in his pocket reaching for his knife. However, the knife was not there, having fallen out as he went overboard, which is why he could not cut himself free. Mrs. Buggit takes comfort in having a body to bury, a rarity for Killick-Claw’s fishermen. The Gammy Bird prepares a special edition in Jack’s honor, and Quoyle agrees to be a pallbearer.

At the wake, the Buggit house is packed with mourners. Bunny insists on attending and stares intently at Jack’s body in the coffin. As Mrs. Buggit leans over to pin a lodge pin to her husband’s lapel, Jack suddenly coughs up water and sits up. Pandemonium ensues as the family realizes he is alive.

In the aftermath, Wavey explains to Bunny that Jack was not really dead. He was just in a coma-like state. When Bunny compares Jack’s coma to her mother, Petal, Wavey tells Bunny the unvarnished truth: Petal is dead and will never wake up. Bunny quietly absorbs this, and when they discover the dead bird she found earlier is gone from its rock, she concludes that it had flown away.

Jack slowly recovers, recounting how he was pulled overboard and lost his knife. As consciousness faded, he came to believe vividly that he was trapped in an enormous pickle jar, waiting to be drawn out. The novel closes with Quoyle and Wavey’s marriage, which Wavey’s father celebrates by gifting them a row of shining hubcaps on sticks in the yard. Quoyle compares love to Jack’s impossible survival, occurring without misery.