Adventure and danger follow a young woman as she escapes her boring suburban life in Toronto for the late 1970s population boom of Whitehorse.
When 21-year-old Connie moves to Whitehorse in the summer of 1978, she's what the locals call a Cheechakoâa green-horned, tender-footed tourist. And Connie couldn't agree more. Amongst the hippies looking for a new frontier, the miners, loggers and contractors looking for a fast buck, and the trappers content with never seeing another human face, she feels like a Cheechakoâlike she picked the worst possible place in which to escape the suburban vacuum of her teenage years. Connie's reservations are confirmed when she stabs Dale her first day in town, after inadvertently interrupting a domestic dispute.
As Connie evades Dale in Dawson, Whitehorse and the wilds off Ashcan Lake, she makes an unlikely friend in the lesbian trapper Rowan, learns to stand on her own two feet, live off the land, and even mush a team of sled dogs.
But when Dale shows up looking for revenge, Connie's escape becomes a nightmare, and the only thing standing between a friend and death is Connie's questionable ability to navigate seven dogs through an unforgiving Yukon winter.