In the fall of 1924, RCMP constables Will Grant, Eric Zalapski, and the troubled Vincent Villeneuve are dropped on a windy gravel beach at Dundas Harbour, a desolate Arctic outpost on Devon Island. CHarged with asserting Canada's soverignty over the vast Far North, the Mounties and their Inuit guides prepare for two years of isolation and service on the fabled Northwest Passage. But no amount of training - not even the horrors of the First World War - would prepare the officers for ice-locked loneliness and threats from ocean storms, blizzards, avalanches, months of darkness, and marauding polar bears. The physical and mental strain are exacerbated by two mysterious, violent deaths. When the Inuit abandon the outpost, Grant realizes that his values and beliefs have changed in ways he could not have imagined. Alone, crushed by the inexplicable deaths, but determined to survive, Grant clings to memories of Naudia, wife of one of the guides - and the land and ice-covered ocean. This is not a frozen hell but rather the cold edge of Heaven.