Abandoned in the frozen wilderness with three monster children no one else wants, Mara is given one last chance to leave them behind—and refuses.
With a deadly winter closing in, she and the children discover a buried waystation and a natural hot spring beneath the ice. What begins as a desperate shelter slowly becomes something more: a warm inn for travelers, outcasts, and creatures with nowhere else to go.
But keeping the doors open is harder than surviving the cold. As guests arrive, supplies run low, official rules close in, and the children begin to wonder whether they are the reason Mara keeps losing everything.
In the coldest place in the world, one mother and three unlikely children will build more than an inn.
They will build a home where no one has to be left outside.