Freelance writer Troy Chance is snapping photos of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival ice palace when the ice-cutting machine falls silent. Encased in the ice is a body. One of her rooommates falls under suspicion and the media descends. Troy is assigned to write an in-depth feature on the dead man, who, it turns out, was the son of a wealthy Connecticut family but playing at a blue collar life. The deeper Troy digs into his life and death, the murkier things become.