Kate tried not to think about it.

From nowhere on either island was there a view that did not include a vast, unending expanse of water. In the north it was the Bering Sea; in the south, the Pacific Ocean. Both bodies of water were a constant reminder of what fueled Dutch Harbor. Dutch was a boom town and looked it. Prefabricated buildings crowded up against each other along narrow strips of beach, beaches that were themselves crowded between a landscape that rose suddenly and vertically with very few softening curves, and a sea that from one moment to the next varied in color from bright blue to dull green. Looking at this view was as alarming as it was invigorating, Kate now discovered, as if she were riding a roller coaster with both feet planted firmly on the ground.

Kate always felt better when she knew exactly where she was, and having identified all the relevant topographical features, she started out down the gravel road with a will. It was sodden beneath her feet. Gulls gave raucous screams as they swooped and dived overhead. A bald eagle perched on the top of a streetlight. He looked down his beak at her in the haughty manner of his kind, and after admiring him for a moment she passed on. The road was an obstacle course of fast-moving pickup trucks and vans, each of the vans with the logo of a different taxi service painted on their sides. Another interesting fact Andy had gleaned from his book on the Aleutians was that there were thirteen cab companies in Dutch, and within the first mile of her walk Kate had narrowly missed being run over by twelve of them.

She passed a crab processor, a surimi plant, another processor, another surimi plant, making her way down the gravel road that paralleled the beach and the rectangular harbor.