Grogan's Cafe

When 19-year old TERRY BELSHAW discovers his father dead at his typewriter, he follows in his older brother CHES's footsteps and goes logging. Before long he is flying north to the gyypo camps of Knight Inlet. Greenhorn Terry is completely unprepared for the hard, often dangerous life that awaits him. Before long he and Ches are separated and Terry is all on his own.

Terry is hired by LUKE CARVER to work at Craddock's Slough, the arsehole of the earth. Here he meets the strange cast of characters that inhabit the logging camp. To make matters worse he ends up chasing chokers for a tyrannical hooktender named LASEREK who takes great pleasure in tormenting the rookie logger. In this green purgatory, Terry is tested and initially found wanting.

Life finally improves when he meets MATT SLATER, a Gary Cooperesque faller and his beautiful young wife, JEAN. Matt teaches Terry about falling trees. Jean has other lessons to teach Terry. While Matt is away, Jean seduces Terry, who falls madly in love. His fantasy is short-lived when Matt nearly catches them in the act. Meanwhile, the brutal hooktender continues his campaign of terror against Terry. Laserek malevolently dead-drops Terry down a 160-foot spar tree. Terry quits and flees to the squalid logger's terminus of Minstrel Island.

While waiting for passage back to the city, Terry loses all his money in a poker game. He meets a mischievous scoundrel named DAVIE GROGAN who offers him a job as a short-order cook in a decidedly bizarre bistro. Terry learns the joys of greasy-spoon cooking from Grogan, a ne'er do well of legendary proportions. Together they attend the biggest affair of the season the Logger's Dance. Terry is flummoxed when Jean appears but she is immediately swept away by old twinkle-toes Grogan. A drunken Laserek challenges Grogan and the dance turns into a free-for-all brawl, which ends when the hall catches fire.

The next day Terry quits Grogan's Cafe and heads back to the woods to test his bushlegs once again, this time in a camp owned by BIG FANNY. There, Terry learns quickly under the guidance of NOAH PIKE. When Noah is badly injured Terry rises to the occasion and he further proves himself fighting a massive forest fire. Finally, Terry receives a letter from Ches informing him of an insurance policy left by their father. He can return to the city at last! He quits his job and heads back to Minstrel Island.

At Minstrel Island, Luke Carver relates the events that have transpired in his absence. Back at Craddock's Slough, Laserek raped Jean. When Matt discovered what had happened he beat the living daylights out of Laserek, carried him to the work site and dropped a tree on him. Matt turned himself into the police. Jean followed for the trial, but on the way she found a sympathetic shoulder to cry on Davie Grogan's.

Shocked and stunned, Terry climbs the gangplank of a ship bound for the city. No longer the naïve city boy, he has become a man and a logger. He vows never to return.

Postscript: Terry spent the next 22 years in logging camps along the coast.