Carrie Essler is an ex-British-Navy rescue swimmer, now working for the Canadian Coast Guard. Transferred to the remote outpost of Tuktoyaktuk after a bitter break-up, she finds herself in dire peril when an oil rig explodes in the Beaufort Sea. Carrie is presumed dead – though in fact she is stranded on a small boat in a nightmarish landscape of oil-laced ice. With her is a dying man, a paralysed stranger she must try to save, and find a way back to civilisation for them both.

What caused the explosion: accident or environmental terrorism? The injured man holds the answers, but he’s not talking. Jim Ross, Carrie’s only friend in the region and the stricken rig’s corporate director, is wrestling with both the catastrophic aftermath and his own guilty secrets. But it is only Ross who believes – against all evidence – that Carrie is alive.

As the oil spill spreads beneath the ice, Ross battles to mount a rescue mission to find Carrie. But is his obsession merely a way to try to assuage his own terrible culpability?