Diary of Fire & Ice takes place in the Canadian Arctic, in the aftermath of world catastrophe. Like its companion book, Diary of Stones & Feathers, this story pares reality to its solitary bones, in a setting stripped of physical comforts and familiar ways of perceiving the world. The young California Indian at the heart of this story is absorbed into an Inuit community, then finds herself on her own in a harsh winter landscape. The letters she writes to a dead friend are a chronicle of nature's potential to both kill and heal.