When Myrtle Rae Forberg steps from her father's boat to the floating dock at Rock Bay, and walks along the board walk to school, she takes her first steps from the water-constrained world in which she has lived since birth to the freedom and independence of a land based world in which she will live the remainder of her life. A nine-year-old granddaughter of Norwegian immigrants, Myrtle's story moves through bewildering and lonely experiences. First there is an adjustment from homeschooling, taught by her mother in their floathouse kitchen, to a one-room school with eight grades on land, in a...