Au matin du 12 janvier 1888, un redoux inattendu s’installe dans les plaines hostiles du Dakota. Les fermiers sortent enfin de chez eux et les enfants regagnent l’école sans leurs lourds manteaux d’hiver. Mais à l’heure de la sortie des classes, un blizzard aussi fulgurant que terrifiant s’abat sur la région. Raina et Gerda Olsen, deux sœurs institutrices de 16 et 17 ans, sont alors confrontées à un dilemme : garder leurs élèves au risque qu’ils meurent de froid, une fois le bois de chauffe épuisé, ou les renvoyer chez eux en priant pour qu’ils survivent. Tandis que les éléments se déchaînent, les deux jeunes filles, seules et livrées à elles-mêmes, se retrouvent au cœur d’un véritable cauchemar. Parviendront-elles à sauver les enfants ?

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats--leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn't get lost in the storm? Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers--one becomes a hero of the storm and the other finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It's also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It was Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured northern European immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed them to settle territories into states, and they didn't care what lies they told these families to get them there--or whose land it originally was. At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents' choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today--because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.