The Pearl Diver, which the author described as fantasy, is one of the earliest long prose works by Poruks. Its main character, Ansis, is from the countryside and comes to Rīga to study. He is passionate; a dreamer and an idealist. For Ansis, “pearl diving” means fulfilling your life’s goals: he wants to make his dreams come true, not just view them from a distance. But his life takes some difficult turns: his mother dies, he is unlucky in love, and he struggles with loneliness and, of course, the possibility that the world will never understand him. Ansis has no shortage of benefactors, including his mentor Talheims, his beloved Anna, and others. As the story progresses, Rīga comes to discover Ansis’s unique nature and he begins to meet new people. The moral of the story is that every reader has to find the “pearls” in their own life (there is also a theory that Poruks used “pearls” to refer to the hearts of good people).