WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD THEAKSTONS CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Canada's Dove River in 1867, a man is brutally murdered and a seventeen-year-old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north toward the forestand the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township--journalists, Hudson Bay Company men, trappers, traders--but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One by one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen, and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two missing sisters, a forgotten Native culture, and a fortune in stolen furs. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humour into a gripping historical tale, an exhilarating thriller, and a keen murder mystery.