Dogsong is young adult novel by Gary Paulsen and a Newbery Honor winner.

[1] Inspired by the Eskimo shaman Oogruk, Russel Susskit takes a dog team and sled to escape the modern ways of his village and to find his own "song" of himself, hating the sound of snowmobiles and his father's coughing in the morning.

He travels across ice floes, tundra, and mountains, haunted along the way by a dream of a long-ago self whose adventures parallel his own.

Reality melds with the dream when he finds an Eskimo girl named Nancy, who has run away from her village after becoming pregnant.

Circumstances require him to provide for himself and the girl in a harsh and unforgiving land.