Three lives, three pebbles dropped into the sea, the ripples converging into transient patterns of interconnection as they each try to come to terms with their fragility and search for meaning. This search ultimately leads them all back to the boathouse, to rediscover the profound impact it had upon their lives. The Boathouse is a story about the healing power of writing and our human need to leave something behind to show that our life had meaning, or in Japanese our ikigai, our reason for living. The novel is in three parts as the three main protagonists take it in turns to describe their life in an old boathouse on the west coast of Hokkaido. A wandering beggar, a young fisherwoman, and an old poet, united in their experience of the healing power of telling the story of their time in the boathouse.