Famous and famously private, salmon-fly dresser Megan Boyd was a craftswoman who worked for sixty years out of a bare-bones cottage in a small village in the north of Scotland. Cropping her hair short and dressing in men's clothing, Boyd always lived life her own way. But who was she? Both present in the story and its architect, Helen Humphreys reveals the complicated emotional landscape that can exist under even the most constant surface, as she fabricates a portrait of an unknowable woman and all the secret passions, choices and compromises that make up a life.

"One of the best—and most wonderfully experimental—historical fiction titles of the year.... Humphreys is an extraordinary writer. Truly spectacular."—Toronto Star