The locus of Jim dale Huot-Vickery's life is a remote cabin in the northern wilderness of Minnesota's Boundary Waters region. More often than not, it is winter here, a fierce, beautiful season that dominates all living things with its relentless cold grip. This is the inspiration for Winter Sign, the profound story of fifteen years of surviving the seven-month-long odyssey of winter in the far north.

"We know parkas, mukluks, mittens, snowshoes, skis, and sled dogs", Huot-Vickery writes. "Snow sparkles gold on cloudless winter mornings. There are shell-pink sunsets. Stars glimmer among...