From the time she was ten years old, the Eskimo girl Alea had only her father and her brother to take care of her. Some of the other Eskimos thought that with no mother to guide her, she would grow up "wild like the foxes," for she hunted and trapped, played boys' games, endured every hardship, and in all ways lived as if she were a boy training for the hard life of the Labrador peninsula.

She herself wanted no other kind of life, for she and Ahpea and Koopah were close and loving companions, sharing pleasures and dangers. But at her first party at the trading post, she felt uncomfortable because of her boyish clothes and because she could not dance like the popular Tamanna. Her father sensed that she must be prepared for womanhood. Thus Alea went to England for an education; and when she returned, she found she had really grown up.

The story of Alea is the more fascinating because it is true. For it is based on the actual girlhood of the author's mother.

From the dust jacket