Half Greenlandic Inuit and half American, Smilla Jaspersen has been torn between two worlds her entire life -- the world in which she lives and the world that she remembers. Brought to Copenhagen from Greenland by her father at the tender age of six, Smilla has never felt truly at home in her adopted country -- its noise, its density, its claustrophobic constraints. As a result, she thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of people and love. Smilla lives in a world of numbers, of science and of memories -- a dark exotic stranger in a strange land. This intellectualized cocoon in which Smilla wraps herself is ripped apart by the apparently accidental death of the one person Smilla has allowed into her life -- a six-year-old Inuit boy from Smilla's native Greenland. Smilla knows that her young friend did not fall from the rooftop on his own. She is convinced that she has uncovered a shattering crime that is only the tip of the iceberg.