Self-styled arctic outdoorsman, John Hornby had already compromised his abilities to survive in the tundra through several incidents of near starvation, and by injuries suffered as a soldier in World War I. He had openly admitted to peers that "he had had enough of the north and wished he had never come". Yet, foolishly, he conscripted his young cousin, nineteen year-old Edgar Christian, and a willing third party, twenty-nine year-old Harold Adlard, both having no survival training or outdoor experience, to join him on an adventure into the most isolated part of the Canadian northland - the Thelon River in the Northwest Territories. This is a story about the tragic Hornby expedition of 1926.

One of Canada's most legendary stories, the reader embarks on a journey as if they were there with Hornby and his two charges. Wilson adds dialogue to the events that unfold using excerpts from Edgar's surviving diary. Not sparing any detail, the author applies his own vast knowledge of winter survival to events that led the three to disaster in a land that shows no mercy to the ill-prepared. Wilson bravely delves into the psychology of men in isolation when deprived of hope but not of love.