Based on a true story, this journey begins in South Dakota in 1917. Will Stoneman is a 17 year old young man who loses his father. Will is left with devastated until one morning he notices a flyer of the Carnival Derby (a dog sled race from Winnipeg, Canada to St. Paul Minnesota) in which his father was thinking of competing. After getting his mother, Maggie Stoneman, to comply, she gets Ned Dodd, an Indian who lives with the family, to get Will straight into training. Once Will arrives to the competition, he is greeted with a ridicule of laughter, yet do they know how bad he wants to win. Will that be enough to get Will from the beginning to end of the race and win, in one piece through the meanest, toughest stretch of land, and weather conditions that he has yet to embark on?
