Barrow newsman Adam Carlson cant wait to escape the northern tip of Alaska for a bigger market. But just when the story of his career breaks, the world comes chasing it too. With an oil tycoon, heads of state and hungry journalists descending upon the frigid outpost to get their moment in the midnight sun, the one person who occupies Adam the most is Rachel Kramer. Not only is she an outspoken environmentalist, she also happens to be his ex-girlfriend.With time running out, Rachel, Adam and Nathan, an 11-year-old native Alaskan boy who learns to connect with his people and his culture, must rally an unlikely coalition of locals, oil companies and Russian and American military to set aside their differences and unite for a purpose they all believe in: freeing the whales in record time. As the Alaskans frantically try to dig miles of holes on one side of the ice and a Soviet icebreaker pushes inland on the other, they must perform the virtually impossible to bridge a four-mile gap. And if they miraculously succeed, the trapped whales will be freed to the safety of open sea to begin their 5,000-mile annual migration. As the worlds attention turns to the top of the globe for two weeks, saving these endangered animals becomes a shared cause for nations entrenched against one another and leads to an unexpected, momentary thaw in the Cold War.