US Army Corporal Rudy Spruance arrives at a remote American military base at Qangattarsa, Greenland - located somewhere above the Arctic Circle - just before the summer solstice in June, 1979. Beyond a two day out of the year environmental occurrence which negatively affects his arrival, his reaction to which he will probably be forever best remembered by his fellow GI's at Qangattarsa, Rudy faces two problems: he is not supposed to be there, his next assignment which was supposed to be at a base in Hawaii; and he cannot convince anyone at Qangattarsa that he is not Corporal Martin Pederson, who is the GI assigned to this posting. Based on the paperwork at the base, Rudy learns that Pederson is a model soldier - an army brat - whereas he himself only enlisted as it was better than the alternative of jail. Lieutenant-Colonel Lane Woolwrap, the base's long time commanding officer, has long wanted a person in Pederson's position as the base's Public Information Officer, aka the head propaganda spin doctor. The responsibility is to include writing a regular base newsletter to maintain morale on the base. The base's actual raison d'être is not clear, with most of the soldiers just following orders regardless. Rudy's primary goal is to get off the base forever in any way he can - legal or otherwise - but in the meantime, he begins a somewhat clandestine relationship with Sergeant Irene Teal, Woolwrap's aide of three years and one of the base's medical officers. The secrecy in their relationship is due to the differences in their rank, although Rudy may discover that there is more to fear if the relationship became public knowledge. Rudy's existence at Qangattarsa takes a turn when he secretly meets a man he will know only as X. Discovering X's complete history and his reason for being at Qangattarsa may answer a lot of questions for Rudy, but those answers may be difficult to ascertain from X directly or anyone else.