Synopsis

Jaanus Karkulainen's ability to make anything he needs on his homestead - clothes, a sewing machine, even a thresher - enabled him to survive the Depression, but did not please his neighbours, already disturbed by his eccentricities. His dream of building a ship and sailing it back to Finland ended in a failed attempt to drag it across the prairie to a river too shallow to float it - and to action by those who had decided that he was crazy. The characters include Jaanus' brother with his anglicized surname and "Canadian" wife, a hypocritical politi­cian, and another homesteader who begins to share the dream of the ship. The realistic dialogue contrasts with the poetic speech of Anna-Marie, a young woman who functions with an on-stage chorus to comment on the action: "Atop the great ship's cabin lay the carcass of his final horse, a flame of stink and blue flies."