Set during an Alaskan blizzard, an electrifying and layered literary thriller of shifting perspectives that unearths the secrets of four very different people-from a multi-award-winning French author A blizzard rages in Alaska. A minute's inattention-just to tie her shoes-and Bess loses track of a child in the blinding snowstorm with its brutal winds. She sets out to find him, followed closely by the few inhabitants of this end of the world. Benedict, with whom she and the boy live, is the scion of the Mayer family, who has lived in this corner of Alaska for generations, and so he, too, is pulled into this search. Benedict enlists Cole, a brutish neighbor, to help, and Freeman, a Vietnam vet wholly out of place in the Far North, is not involved in the search but rather serves as a counterpoint to these three wandering souls. Blizzard is a frantic race against death, where the destiny of each subject facing the elements is revealed. How did Benedict, the local boy, find himself responsible for this boy who is probably much more cultured than he will ever be? What secret does Bess seem to be carrying? What is the story of Cole, the boorish man who forgets himself by drinking? What is Freeman doing in this remote corner of Alaska? The result is a quest not only for this child, who may very well have already frozen to death in the extreme cold, but also for the truth that each of them is reluctant to accept and come to terms with.
