When Doctor Victor Borroughs hears of a remote northern island where people roam naked and live like wild animals, he travels there to investigate, hoping that a scientific breakthrough will revive his flagging career. Under the austere light of the arctic summer, with the help of a Jesuit priest, a quiet fisherman, a girl who longs to fly, and a mysterious and beautiful medicine woman, he comes to the brink of a dangerous discovery that may reveal the true price of being human.