The Legacy is several stories, intertwined and layered, that reveal more and plumb deeper than any one story could alone. It is set against the tableau of a heroic mush to save Nome during the great diphtheria epidemic of 1925. It is a story of Philippe Morrell and his lead dog, Balto, who made the run and the people, places and events that made his life stand out above those who had condemned him to the life of a social outcast. It is also a story that spans one hundred years in the lives of the Morrells, a prominent Canadian family who built and controlled a powerful financial empire, but also of what they owed to the man who was their patriarch. Philippe faced the harsh elements and his own demons during a ragging blizzard in subzero temperatures, driving his dogs and himself with superhuman effort to deliver the diphtheria vaccine from Nenana to Nome across 650 miles of rough pack ice and frozen rivers. Near the end of a life filled with tragedy and triumph, at the extreme limit of human endurance where sanity and madness meet, on the verge of death itself, he finds redemption in himself.
The Legacy is both a sprawling adventure, a powerful love story and an intimate character study where past, present and future are inextricably joined. In the end, it reveals what beats in the heart of a great family.