Embedded in an Alaskan glacier is evidence that would overturn more than a century of Western thinking. The radical discovery sets off a deadly chain-reaction that stretches across the continent and changes the lives of several people, including a dissatisfied young Pennsylvanian man and a heartbroken Inuit woman. An entire culture is seduced by an illusion, but who can guess the extremes powerful people might go to in order to preserve the lie?