"Nukik!" Lincoln gasped, his skin tingling. Could this be happening? Had he just seen a whale with a white tail? Was it now going to give itself to him, as Vincent Ologak, the Eskimo whaling captain, had said?
Lincoln still could not believe it. He had made the long trip from Massachusetts to Barrow, Alaska, to find his Uncle Jack. He thought Vincent Ologak could tell him where to look, for Vincent was the man Uncle Jack had planned to see when he went to Alaska to help save the bowhead whale from extinction.
But the ailing captain would not give Lincoln a straight answer. As far as he was concerned, Lincoln was there for a very different purpose: a whale is coming to Lincoln, a whale that would end two years of waiting and suffering for Vincent's people.

Nothing in Lincoln's experience prepares him for the whaling camp at Barrow. Here ice is a living presence and the temperature is so cold that spilled water hits the ground as ice balls. Here for the first time he meets young Eskimos - especially Little Owl, with whom he falls deeply in love - whose strong identification with their Eskimo culture leads Lincoln to question his own identity. But above all else it is Vincent Ologak and Nukik the whale who teach Lincoln about love and man's cooperation with nature.