The setting: A radio station in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, 1975. In Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay depicts the frozen Canadian north on the verge of major changes: the arrival of television, oil and gas exploration, and heightened tensions between natives and outsiders.

For anyone who has a romantic yearning to go to or return to the northern wilderness, this book evokes all the lonely beauty of the land (and sky). And the author is absolutely on target in her portrayal of the misfits, dreamers, emotional refugees and native peoples who create lives for themselves on the edge of the tundra- just the way you would find them if you traveled to a remote, icy frontier. The plot leads in a meandering way to unexpected twists of fortune, romantic pairings, and tragedy; my interest in these (for the most part) sympathetic, complex characters kept me hooked throughout.