"As a child in St. John's, orphan Devlin Stead lives with his taciturn Uncle Edward and his benevolent Aunt Daphne. He grows up an outcast and a loner, until one day his uncle hands him an extraordinary letter from the explorer Dr. Frederic Cook - the first in a series of letters that will change everything he thought he knew about himself. Devlin sails to New York to become Dr. Cook's protégé. There he falls in love with a young woman with an astonishing connection to his birth mother. Eventually he accompanies Cook on his epic race to reach the Pole before his arch-rival, Lieutenant Robert Peary.