""You'll want to scratch." These spoken words introduce us to the strange and beguiling world of young Rudy Spruance, forced to join the military due to a mysterious past, and sent for some unexplainable reason to a top-secret military hospital in Greenland.

There he meets a wide cast of unusual and colorful characters, outcasts and rejects all, begins to fall for the commanding officer's leggy and strong-willed girlfriend, and slowly uncovers the awful secret behind the portion of the base dubbed "the Wing." He has been assigned to start a base newspaper - to tell the stories of the men and women of Qangattarsa, Greenland - but when Rudy probes too far, when he asks the wrong questions of the wrong people, strange things begin to happen.".

"This is a world where glaciers crouch on the horizon, icebergs float along the bay, and polar bears must be chased away from the base's dump.

It is also a place where conflicting forces intersect, where history, so long held at bay, begins to encroach, and a place that in several months' time will be submerged in an endless night, affectionately termed "the Stark Raving Dark." What begins as a harmless exploration turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse adventure, and Rudy must finally uncover the truths of the base, rescue the people he loves, and somehow escape the arctic alive."--BOOK JACKET.