Salmonberries plot
Kotzbue, an Eskimo foundling who takes her name from the village where she was found, looks like a boy but is a woman. She has never received human warmth. In the coldest region of the world she is looking for contact for the first time in her life. She directs her need to the librarian Roswitha, a woman who has buried her past in the ice of Alaska. Her husband was shot and killed while fleeing over the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. Roswitha ultimately cannot withstand Kotzbue's persistence. Together they go back to her past in Berlin and Alaska in search of Kotzbue's origins.