It Came by Loss concentrates on Pete Gordon, about to graduate from Stanford. The tale launches with Pete sitting at the hospital bed of his extroverted and charismatic mother, as he tries to come to grips with her demise from alcoholic liver failure. An attraction with the young nurse caring for his mother draws Pete to reveal his vulnerabilities. A connection develops, since Julia's father also died of alcoholic liver failure. She suggests an experiment that they become intimate and face any personal or relational conflict, and talk-it-through. The relationship is curative for both of them. Pete is haunted by the tragic death of his friend, Alf, when the two young men surfed monster waves at Todos Santos Island in Mexico. The accident was foreshadowed by a trip to Patzcuaro, Mexico, for El Día de los Muertos, when the two friends ruminated on the Mexicans' relationship with death and pondered their own responses to mortality. After graduation Pete becomes an assistant at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He shares a lab with a woman, Valerie. They become an item. The ISO position involves a trip to the Sea of Cortez with an unstable marine biologist that risks their lives. Dr. Fields is crazed to go out gathering specimens and Pete and Valerie fervently advise against diving after a violent squall. Fields is washed away from the research boat at night. Pete rescues him in the dramatic ferocity of the sea. Valerie and Pete discuss their future and through the backdoor Valerie proposes to Pete. Pete rises from the tragedies of his past.