Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His books include the Independent Publishers Book Award?winning short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge and the national bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow. Reporting for CBC News for the bulk of his journalism career, in 2014 he received the Anishinabek Nation's Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling and from 2018 to 2020 he hosted Up North, CBC Radio's afternoon show for northern Ontario.

For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home in the wake of the power failure that brought about societal collapse. Since then they have survived and thrived the way their ancestors once did, but their natural food resources are dwindling, and the time has come to find a new home. Evan Whitesky volunteers to lead a mission south to explore the possibility of moving back to their original homeland, the "land where the birch trees grow by the big water" in the Great Lakes region.