Horvath has acknowledged that there is an existing community called Coal Harbour on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, that furnishes the geographical location of her narrative. However, the town in the story is a fictional creation, with no correlation between the actual community and her make-believe version. As the author portrays it, the Coal Harbour of the novel is a village supported primarily by fishing, whaling, and a Canadian naval base. Though published in 2001, the author does not specify the chronological setting of the story. There are few time references in the narrative that would allow a determination of when the story occurs. Uncle Jack remarks that whaling is in decline and the fishing industry by itself may not be able to support the economy of the community. In the area the author describes, whaling actually died out in the late 1960s. Coal Harbor, as Horvath describes it, is a community of a few hundred citizens in a western inlet of Vancouver Island on the Pacific Coast. Though north of Washington State, the climate of the area is fairly temperate year-round due to Pacific currents.

While Vancouver Island was quite populous in 2001, with an overall citizenry of 663,000 people, the village Horvath describes is small, as indicated by how everyone in the community knows every other person; the town council itself must decide how to support Primrose, their lone orphan; and

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