This is the story of a group backwoods ski trip that went terribly wrong, with a middle-aged man and a teenage boy unrelated to him going missing when they headed out on what was meant to be a brief morning ski run and took a wrong turn, becoming trapped in a snowstorm. The remaining members of the group, encompassing members of several families, were forced to wait and worry and later to deal with the consequences (it's not a fully happy story, and it's fairly easy to guess while reading who will ultimately come through the crisis). The book encompasses both the events and the aftermath as it plays out among all the families involved; in fact, the history relationships among the various family members often seems primary here given the fact that the crisis itself was not really complex or long-lasting enough to fill an entire book. I found it a reasonably compelling read, though anyone looking for a story with a neat and complete resolution is not going to find that here.