Mabel and Jack, a childless couple in their early 50s, have relocated from Pennsylvania to become homesteaders along the Wolverine River in the panhandle of Alaska. Mabel, the daughter of a university literature professor and brought up in privilege, urged her husband to pursue the opportunity hoping to find in the frontier refuge from the memories of the death of their child, stillborn more than 10 years earlier. While Jack struggles to work the farm, Mabel is left alone. She has considered suicide, but she knows the shame it would bring on her husband.

The couple both fear the approaching winter. To help make ends meet, Mabel sells pies in a hotel restaurant in the nearby town of Alpine. But when the owner tells Jack that they can no longer sell the pies, Jack considers applying for work in the nearby coal mines, dangerous work for a man of his age. A neighbor, George Benson, whose prosperous farm is about 10 miles from Jack’s, offers Jack the help of his sons to get Jack’s fields cleared for the winter. It is a generous offer, but George understands “the first years are lean” (20).