In Outside Passage Julia Scully regathers the memories of her childhood - the isolated far western Alaskan frontier before and during World War II. They begin with her immigrant parents' efforts to make a living during the Depression in California and the Pacific Northwest. Faced with illness and despair, Julia's father commits suicide when she is seven, and she and her older sister, Lillian, discover his body.

Julia's mother then leaves her daughters in a San Francisco orphanage and goes to Alaska, searching for an economic toehold at the edge of the continent. Eventually, her mother buys a roadhouse - the only public place in Taylor, Alaska, it serves the settlement's small-time gold miners - and at last sends for her daughters to rejoin her.

Despite the cold and isolation of Alaska, there are small blessings for Julia to count: secretive summer wildflowers and berries on the seemingly barren landscape, and the wild animals - reindeer, fox, and wolves - that roam the endless tundra. The young Julia serves whiskey to the rough customers who play poker at the ramshackle roadhouse, pans gold with a beguiling prospector, kisses her first boyfriend - one of the soldiers ordered to Alaska to defend against a possible Japanese invasion.