It is 1937. Winter is taking hold and the long arctic night is beginning. A single engine plane crashes in the Alaska wilderness. Its three passengers survive--the plane's pilot, C. "Killer" Armstrong Wingate; Nuna Cunningham, seventeen-years-old, pregnant, and already a widow; and Rolland "Rembrandt" Martin, an ambitious artist from Manhattan.
Rolland is the only one hurt. When he awakes, he is on a bearskin rug, wolf furs covering his body, and Nuna, granddaughter of a Yup'ik shaman, is chanting unfamiliar hymns into his ear. An ivory amulet rests on his chest.
Sixty years later, the Phillips Museum is preparing a retrospective exhibit to celebrate Rolland Martin's art. He hires Connie Johnson, a young single mother, to ghostwrite an autobiographical sketch for the museum's catalog.
Nuna is central to Rolland's story. Her mystical beliefs and shamanistic skills lead him into worlds he did not know existed. And only after he belatedly infuses his art with her universe does he achieve eminence.