Who knew that a moonlit moose in Denali Park, Alaska, would someday result in Bethany Page receiving an invitation from the President of the United States in 2005 to be the first artist featured in the new wing of the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C.? And what did she do, she panicked and did what most of us would do, she called her eight-five year old parents. "They want a history of how I became a painter," she told them and their response, " It's about time you got that story of a thirteen year old ranger's daughter's first summer in Mt. McKinley Park, down. That was forty-seven years ago and as your parents can testify, your memory doesn't get any better with age. As you write, send us the chapters and we'll help anyway we can." And thus began the story of the summer that changed everything.

So what is it that turns a summer into the pivotal point of your life? In Beth Page's case it was a crusty diminutive retired logger with decided views on the sanctity of national parks, and the lone year round resident of the ghost town of Kantishna who had been waiting 52 years for her husband to return from a prospecting trip .The year is 1958 and the setting is Mt. McKinley National Park, a park seldom visited and therefore the perfect setting for Beth's father who seeks the solace of remote wilderness areas as balm for the psychological wounds of WWII. When they arrive in the park in May, Beth is angry and appositional about yet another move to a remote location. Her father, thrust into a single parent role while his wife takes care of her sick mother, swings between too lenient and too strict. As Beth said, "The pot is on the boil."

Hank Jovanovich, the retired logger, spends the summers in the park as an unpaid helper, living in an old storage shack behind the ranger station at Wonder Lake. While Beth initially thinks him bossy and too opinionated, she finds herself spending time with him when he offers to show her the park . He introduces her to the magnificent and rare albino moose that only a few locals know about and makes her promise to tell no one, including her father. As the summer progresses, Beth becomes very concerned that Old Hank may be involved with the "accidents" happening to miners and visitors to the park who have violated park rules throughout the summer..

The year round resident of Kantishna is Eloise Singleton who had arrived there when she was only 13 and already married. When her husband goes missing, Eloise carves out a simple but hard life for herself. Because she dresses and acts as though she is still living at the beginning of the century, people consider her odd, but Beth learns Eloise is both competent and canny. It is Eloise who encourages Beth to develop her artistic abilities with the help of her summertime neighbor, Mike Garrety, an art teacher and a successful artist. From Mike Beth learns that what you see with your eyes and what you see with your heart must both be probed to become a successful artist.

The most dangerous lesson Beth learns in the course of the summer, however, comes from keeping the secret of the albino moose. This secret endangers her life twice, Old Hank's life, and eventually even the life of her mother. Surviving the consequences of the secret along with the lessons she has learned from Old Hank, Eloise and Mike, Beth ends her first summer a vastly different person than she was at the beginning.