Could her husband want her dead? There are so many things she doesn't understand.
It's 1881 and Dmitri Bressoff, son of a Russian adventurer, stays in Alaska after the purchase of Seward's Folly by the United States. A widower with a ten year old daughter to raise, he cannot forget his wife. Depressed by his age and loneliness, his assignation with one woman turns into marriage to another.
A young widow, dependent on her uncle by marriage, Camille has taken to opium to avoid her problems. Waking from a laudanum induced dream to find she is married to her uncle's client, is frightening.
Anya, Dmitri's daughter, is at the center of a struggle between cultures and two men. Ooskada claims her, but Dmitri will not give his daughter up.
Camille is thrown into an emotionally charged situation on an isolated island in Southeast Alaska. Someone wants her dead and it could well be her new husband.