The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: two million-plus acres of primeval forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh -- a country-western singer at the height of her fame -- has disappeared. Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, intent on hiring Cork O'Connor -- former Aurora sheriff and an old family friend -- to find his daughter. Reluctant at first, Cork finds himself forced into joining a search party comprised of Shiloh's father, an angry ex-convict, a pair of FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. But they are not the only ones hunting Shiloh. Others are on her trail as well. Hired men: hired not just to find her...but to kill her. As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's snow-whitened streets over a fifteen-year-old unsolved murder. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses all contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a relentless Minnesota blizzard, death -- violent and sudden -- stalks them.