Chapter 20 Summary

That weekend Billy took Quoyle out on his boat to go over to Gaze Island pointing out all the major rocks and their names. Billy asked him whether he had seen the distant relative Nolan yet. He told Quoyle that he heard that Nolan thinks the old house is his. Quoyle had never heard that before and he thought the man should've come to them to talk about it. Billy agreed and said that the Quoyles were "wild and inbred, half-wits and murderers." Quoyle had never heard this before and had not heard the stories that Billy alluded to. Billy said he was better off.

Gaze Island came into view and Billy revealed that he had grown up and lived there until age forty. The island had been abandoned since 1960, when the government moved everyone off. There had been five families on the...