This was a hard book to put down once I'd started. The story has a stranded Canadian sailor, John McLennan, as its main character, whose life is saved by the Chukchi. During his becoming adapted to their way of life and marrying among them, he finds the English language useful in communicating with and warding off occasional scientific explorers and other adventurers, who find these inhabitants and their land of Wrangel Island off Siberia tempting prey for get-rich schemers. The full range of lean and prosperous seasons in the stark, isolated landscape circa 1910 to 1917 is heartbreaking and joyous in turns. The reader will find plenty of walrus and nerpa and other sea animals and their usefulness to wonder at. The flavor of the this slice of life comes through too from the translator's leaving in some authentic everyday words, whose meaning is immediately appararent from the context or the aid right at the bottom of the page.