Tundra

Dr. Jason Barlow, a flying doctor in the Alaskan tundra, flies to a remote Eskimo village in Solitude Bay and saves a sick child through surgery. Two Eskimos then travel four hundred miles by dog sled to bring Barlow back to their pestilence-ridden village of Noonak. Because the men's dogs are half-starved and exhausted, Barlow must take his plane farther than he has ever traveled across frozen land. Barlow is forced to descend when he has engine trouble, and the plane crashes and burns in a bank of snow surrounded by frigid water. Barlow narrowly escapes an avalanche and a polar bear, and swims to land, carrying only a pencil, a notebook, three cigarettes, and a lighter. He continues to log his journey in his notebook and manages to start a fire in a mountain cave, which is the home of two brown bear cubs and their fierce mother. Barlow names the friendly cubs "Tom" and "Jerry" and together they elude the mother bear. Barlow and the cubs survive on muskrat and salmon, but endure prolo