Following the loss of his brother to the war in Europe, Canadian writer John Easley feels duty-bound to report the story that seems to have fallen into his lap: the 1943 Japanese occupation of the U.S. Aleutian Islands and the Allied attempts to drive the Japanese forces back into the sea. But when his plane is shot down over the island of Attu, he is exposed to the full fury of a wilderness known as 'the Birthplace of Winds.' He soon discovers that the island's indigenous residents (U.S. citizens) have all disappeared and that he has one choice: surrender or face starvation and madness alone. Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away in Seattle, Helen Easley will not sit idly by. She invents a new identity, one designed to take her from the safety of her childhood home to the war in the North Pacific. There, Helen believes, she will find her husband and reclaim their love - if only her determination can overcome their fate. So begins this moving and spellbinding portrait of lives forever altered by one of the least-known battles of World War II, the only one fought on American soil.