For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by Greenland—an island, a terrain, and a culture that is defined by ice. Unlocking the secrets of this severe land and those who live there, Ehrlich introduces a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the 23 words the Inuit have for ice, befriends a polar bear hunter, and comes to agree with the explorer Knud Rasmussen that "all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in great solitudes."

"No one who reads this wonderful book will ever forget these singular people or the austerities of the land they inhabit."—Thomas McGuane