Vivi Aguirre's thirteenth birthday wasn't turning out at all the way she wanted it to. Her father had just left home and her mother was insisting on taking her to Labrador to make a film about some old whaling station. What could be more boring! But once they're in Red Bay and Vivi starts to discover more about whales and the Basques who used to hunt them back in the 1600s, things start to change. Tiny old Gracie Easton, charming Marc Auger and even know-it-all Percy Morris force Vivi to come to terms with herself and her family. She even begins to understand her father and his fierce pride in his Basque background. Together the historic Basque whalers and the 20th-century Newfoundlanders teach her more about life and love than anything she has ever learned back in Ontario...and make this, her thirteenth summer, one she will never forget...The Summer the Whales Sang.