Summary
A crystalline chandelier of Manhattan soirées shatters; Ninon Le Compte, glacial sovereign of parlour gossip, inherits a map inked in muskrat blood and walks off the gilt edge of her world. Hudson Bay greets her with a slap of ochre light: saw-toothed pines, the iron reek of fox traps, a trading post that looks like a splintered coffin hammered together by frost-blind gods. Enter Lazar, a métis satyr wrapped in caribou hide, whose gaze strips sealskin at twenty paces; he covets not merely the pelts stacked like black currency but the heiress herself, imagining her Paris pearls swinging above a bed of cedar boughs. Spurned, he torches the warehouse—an aurora of revenge that licks the constellations and turns beaver pelts into flaming comets. Pursuit follows: sled dogs panting steam into star-drunk darkness, Ninon’s sable coat whipping like a wounded flag, Frederick—her ever-proposing tin-soldier suitor—bleeding out his devotion in scarlet snow. In a glade ringed by ice-daggers, Lazar’s lust lunges; Frederick’s ribs meet a skinning knife; Lawatha, the silent Cree sharpshooter who has watched everything with obsidian eyes, fires once—then twice—exchanging death for death while the northern lights applaud in green silence. The survivors crawl southward, half-frozen, half-transfigured: Ninon’s manicure ruined, Frederick’s smirk replaced by something close to grace, the Winnipeg skyline finally rising like mercy made of brick. They do not speak of love; they simply breathe the same hoarfrost air, two orphans of elegance reborn into a frontier that no ballroom could ever haunt again.
Synopsis
Tired of her friends and life as a society leader, Ninon Le Compte goes north to the Hudson Bay area to inspect trapping holdings inherited from her uncle. Frederick Van Court, who frequently proposes to her, and Flora O'Hare accompany her. Lazar, the Canadian manager of the post, openly desires both the company and Ninon for himself and sets fire to the warehouse when Ninon sends him away. When Ninon, Frederick, and Lawatha catch up with Lazar, he makes advances to Ninon; Frederick defends her and is seriously hurt. Lazar and Lawatha kill each other, and Ninon and Frederick survive the difficult return journey to find a happy future.
