Bristol Bay is a mass of water in southwest Alaska north of the Alaska Peninsula. Every summer, the salmon swim back to Bristol Bay and up the rivers to the lakes they were born in. Naknek is a town built on one of these rivers, the Naknek River. It is not much more than a trickle – mucky brown from thick slimy mud occupying it like the thick gunk in a drain. There are rocks, boulders, and random scraps of rusted, flaking metal emerging from the mud like decrepit corpses rising from their graves.