Miyax, a thirteen-year old girl whose mother is dead and whose father disappeared while hunting, has run away. She intends to use the survival skills her father taught her to walk from Point Barrow to Point Hope. There, she plans to get a job on one of the huge ships as a laundress or cook and work her way to San Francisco, where she has a pen pal, Amy, who always ends her letters, "When are you coming to San Francisco?" Unfortunately, the tundra is different from her home country, and Miyax is lost.

Remembering what Miyax's father Kapugen, the great hunter, told her, she uses the body language she has learned from watching a wolf pack to persuade them to take her in and feed her. Miyax calls the great black lead wolf Amaroq, the Eskimo word for wolf. She names his mate Silver, and...