The Heart of Unaga

Ridgwell Cullum sets this 1920 adventure in the Canadian sub-Arctic, on the barely mapped plateau country called Unaga. A letter in a woman’s hand reaches Seal Bay on the Hudson coast: two traders, Marcel Brand and Cyrus Allshore, have been murdered at their remote post. It says little else, and the messenger who carried it can add nothing. Mounted Police inspector Steve Allenwood is ordered north to find out what happened, a job that will take two years and separate him from his wife Nita and their infant daughter. Brand was a chemist, and the post ran a quiet trade of its own. What Allenwood finds there, including Brand’s small son, opens into a longer story of endurance and buried purpose. Cold and distance are the real antagonists, and Cullum treats them as forces rather than scenery.