 The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages and disguises, and reluctantly he is forced to slip across the border on a rescue mission, the consequences of which he little imagines.The detailed picture of life in the Kolyma region and of the native peoples of the Russian Far East (such as the Evenks) and British Columbia (such as the Tsimshian) is impressive.Philip Pullman has said of the novel