After a deadly epidemic strikes a Yup'ik village, newly widowed teacher John Morgan must make the thousand-mile trek across the Alaskan wilderness for help and encounters a blind Yup'ik girl and an elderly woman who need his protection.
State trooper Nathan Active, born in Chukchi but adopted and raised in Anchorage, struggles to understand the native culture of the village where he is stationed when he is called upon to investigate the murder of a tribal leader who was stabbed to death with an antique harpoon that had been recently turned to the community in accordance with the Indian Graves Act.