SIDE LAUNCH: A NOVEL begins when would-be Maine transplant Susannah stumbles across the forgotten, seen-better-days coastal town of Ossonet. There she meets Owen Dodd, who comes from a long line of wooden shipbuilders and whose family shipyard closed to wooden schooner building over seventy-five years ago. The two begin seeing each other, and within weeks, Susannah is spending most of her time at Owen's tumbledown shipyard, intrigued by his plan to build a seventy-foot wooden schooner, using age-old shipbuilding techniques and traditions that few remember.

Susannah struggles to make a new life in the world of rural Maine, both at her job as a new newspaper reporter in nearby Clydebank and with Owen. Meanwhile Owen assembles a chaotic group of shipwrights linked to the region's maritime past-from the Caribbean, French Canada and the local MicMac traditions. This manly crew increasingly invites Susannah into their world of bantering camaraderie and passion for their shipbuilding craft. Over the course of a cold Maine winter-with the deadline to launch the schooner fast approaching-her life in the shipyard reveals surprising new discoveries and passions, driving a profound transformation in Susannah that mirrors the completion of the schooner.