This is a novel about humanity's relationship to itself, to other species, and to the sea. The planet is warming, species are becoming extinct, and the sea is changing. At the turn of the twentieth century, two boys, twin brothers, are born in a Newfoundland outport. One goes to school and becomes a powerful financier and industrialist. The other goes sealing off Labrador where he almost drowns and is rescued by the Inuit. One changes the sea through the commodification of fishing and the other is changed by the sea through a shamanic experience.

Their intriguing story involves a beautiful Bostonian woman whose strange fate it is to engender a new form of humanity. By turns tragic, funny, and erotic, Sea-Change is a perplexing book, but no more perplexing than the changes humanity must undergo if we are to survive with other creatures on this blue planet.