The Karluk Expedition of 1913 was to be a grand scientific journey to the high Arctic, the most comprehensive polar research ever undertaken. Instead, the Karluk's team of scientists, hard-luck crewmen, one Inuit family and ship's cat soon became stuck. Shipwrecked and marooned on a heaving ocean of ice, they would see death, deprivation, injury, illness, deceit - even murder - during their agonizing year-long fight for survival.