The narrative recounts the arrival and care of a pale infant found in an Arctic settlement and follows her early life amid a landscape of glaciers, icebergs, and seasonal extremes. Natural-history passages describe wildlife, shifting daylight and darkness, and local inhabitants’ snow houses, clothing, and hunting practices. Visitors from surrounding communities come to admire and present gifts to the child, whose days are spent bundled in furs, bathed and tended indoors through the polar night, and later taken outdoors during the continuous summer sun. Interwoven are vivid scenes of household routines in a remote dwelling, the child's growing habits, and cultural exchange between the household and nearby people.