A young boy growing up on a northern Minnesota farm describes the scenes around him and recounts his old Norwegian uncle's tales of an almost mythological logging past. The winter room is where Eldon, his brother Wayne, old Uncle David, and the rest of the family gather on icy cold nights, sitting in front of the stove. There the boys listen eagerly to all of Uncle David's tales of superheroes. Then one night Uncle David tells the story, "The Woodcutter,"...

As winter progresses, the strange man in the worn flight jacket dances frequently on the ice of the rink, expressing more with his movements than most people do with words.

The author relates incidents in his life and how they inspired parts of his books about the character, Brian Robeson.

For a rugged outdoor man and his family, life in northern Minnesota is a wild experience involving wolves, deer, and the sled dogs that make their way of life possible. Includes an account of the author's first Iditarod, a dogsled race across Alasaka.

Carley recalls the extraordinary summer when, as a troubled fourteen-year-old, he first came to northern Minnesota to stay with his blacksmith Uncle David and gained not only new skills but also a new sense of himself.