In the Far North, an elderly man lives with his young daughter on an abandoned fur farm. He tries to drown out his troubled life and difficult memories with backbreaking work and caring for his daughter. On a riverboat ride home, the head of a Yakut village meets a young woman. The young woman recognizes him as her adopted brother, the one who brought her, an orphan, to the boarding school from a distant village and looked after her like an older brother. The man decides to make a radical change in his life, leaving his home, his job, and his social standing for the sake of his beloved.