An historical thriller set in a remote mining community in the American North West at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, where the expectations of the approaching new century play out against the reality of the euphoria and promise of the gold rush coming to an end. A story of greed and betrayal, of innocent hope and pitiless cruelty.A young English reporter, Thomas Speake, comes from Chicago to the mining town of Hope to record the lives of the people who have been brought there by the possibility of finding gold. He discovers that their reasons for coming to such a wilderness town are not always only to do with the search for wealth. He is himself trying to escape the memories of the protracted death of his father that still haunt him. He discovers the bodies that are stored in the ice barn, awaiting burial in the spring; his curiosity is aroused about the circumstances of their deaths, particularly that of a young Swedish boy whose body had been discovered beneath the ice on the day of his own arrival.As Speake searches for the truth about the death of the boy found under the ice, he learns of the long history of rivalry between the solitary figure of Josh Allenby, undertaker and owner of the ice barn, and Brogan Sullivan, proprietor of the saloon. As his feelings grow for Lucy Harrigan, one of Sullivan's prostitutes at the saloon, his animosity towards Sullivan deepens, fuelled by allegations from Allenby that Sullivan had killed the boy.Events in the town slowly spiral out of Speake's control, drawing him into a final deadly confrontation with Sullivan in the ice barn from which only one of them will survive.
