At the Barrow Arctic Research Lab, George observed scientists who were studying wolves and attempting to break their communication code. She allegedly witnessed a man bite the wolf on the top of its nose and communicate with it in soft whimpers, and "the incident stayed with George". George herself successfully communicated with a female wolf. Upon remembering the Inuk girl walking by herself on the tundra that she and her son Luke saw on their way to Barrow, she decided to write a book about a young girl surviving on her own in the tundra by communicating with wolves. The character of Miyax/Julie is based on an Inuk woman named Julia Sebevan, who taught George "about the old ways of the ".