Carrie Ritter runs away to the wilds of Alaska with Bart McFee, a manly yet gentle fugitive from society, to escape her repetitive life in southern California where she has experienced one too many failed relationships. A harrowing plane ride and dog-sled trek later Carrie is shocked when she arrives at a tiny, wood-heated cabin with an outhouse set a daunting distance away amid a waist-high October snowfall. She finds surviving in her new world bewildering and uncomfortable as she is forced to deal with sled dogs, wolves, sub-zero temperatures, blizzards, cabin fever and an eccentric native Alaskan intruder. Eventually the majestic scenery dazzles her and the rigors of frontier life give her a bracing sense of self-sufficiency and she falls in love with her cabin mate and the natural landscape that defines her new life…until the suffocating winter darkness sets in and her struggle to survive begins in earnest.