The improbable collaboration between an ambitious young writer, Leonidas Hubbard, and a forty-year-old New York attorney, Dillon Wallace. They set off in the spring of 1903 with George Elson, an Aboriginal guide with no first-hand knowledge of their destination—the incompletely mapped Lake Michikamau region of interior Labrador. Beset by delays, the men paddle past their intended route, the Naskaupi River, and head up the dreadful Susan River instead. When in early September they finally glimpse the vast waters of Michikamau from atop an unknown mountain, the cold winds have already begun. With almost no food left the three begin a desperate struggle against starvation and the quickening pace of a cruel winter, heading homeward in a race for their lives.