The story "The Loons- is set in Canada in 1930, and the action takes place in Manawaka and by the Diamond Lake. Manawaka is a small city, mostly containing Eurpoean citizens, who do not really like the Indians, or their way of living. The Tonnerre family live just below Manawaka, by the Wachakwa River. They have a shack based on a small square cabin made of polar poles and chinked with mud, which Jules Tonnerre built fifty years ago. The Diamond Lake is a place where the MacLeod family has a cottage. This is where Piquette, on of the indian kids, spends her summer when she is 13 years old, sick from the tuberculosis in the bone. The setting is important to the story. It is about Native American's lives, which was not very easy because of the Europeans that did not really like them. The lives of the Tonnerre family members would have been completely different if it was not for the setting. They behaved as they did because they were not accepted, and it was hard to live with that. The story would take a completely different direction if the Tonnerres were accepted and lived a place where they could work and live as other Europeans, or if they could live together with other Native Americans. It is not a coincidence that the summer is spent at Diamond Lake. It has many reasons, among them that it is a special place for Vanessa and her father, with the loons and all, that cries like Piquette.
Tonnerre, a French halfbreed familiy, live in Manawaka, a town with many European citizens. One of the young girls in the family is Piquette. She had had tuberculosis of the bone, and had spent many months in hospital. Her doctor is MacLeod, a father of two kids, who is really caring and kind to Piquette. One summer he persuades his family to let Piquette come with them and bring the summer at Diamond Lake, in their cottage. He does not want to send her home, because she always has to do the housework, which would not really make her well again.