Jean Marcel, a French trapper on the east coast of Hudson Bay, sets out to find the unknown headwaters of the Big Salmon and the Eskimo trade beyond them, while Julie Breton waits for him at the Whale River mission — and when the snows close in, it is Fleur, his great lead-dog, who stands between the team and the barrens. Marsh set his books among the dog teams, canoe routes and trading posts of the far north and wrote the cold as a working condition rather than an adventure — the dogs are characters, the ice is not scenery. Fifty-seven plates, from George Catlin's Sioux chiefs to Winslow Homer's dogs, echo the loyalty and survival that carry Marsh's trappers and their teams across the barrens.
