Loggers call them "the jungles" - the scattered islands and dense rain forests of the BC coast's Knight Inlet area. Young Terry Belshaw swore he'd stay out of them, but when he"s down on his luck and "fresh out of better ideas," he leaves 1950s Vancouver to try his luck in the woods.

As Terry feared, there's only one way to learn to be a logger the hard way. After a series of misadventures - including an intense affair with the sensuous wife of a faller - he ends up on Minstrel Island, the crossroads of Knight Inlet's rough brotherhood of gyppo logging camps. A boozy interlude as a cook in Davie Grogan's dismal cafe offers relief from the backbreaking toil of logging, but when long-simmering lusts and rivalries explode into mayhem at an island dance, Terry goes back to the woods, where GROGAN'S CAF

speeds to a powerful climax.