It is the spring of 1919, a famous American outlaw - long thought dead - arrives at Seaford, a small fishing village on Cortes Island. Under an alias, Frank Waterman defrauds the community and soon commits a murder. This founding story, a conflation of old island legends, becomes the catalyst for the sin of arrogance to sweep through decades and churn the lives of the island characters. In the tales that follow, treasures are lost and found. The tuna clipper, Arrogant, and crew of four, mysteriously disappear at sea. The sons of the vanished fathers suffer sexual and physical abuse at a catholic boarding school before setting forth on quests to discover their forbears. Voyage of the Arrogant is the first volume in the Edge of Desolation trilogy covering a one hundred year period. The setting is the remote west coast of British Columbia focusing on the islands of Cortes and West Redonda.