Margaret and Thomas Hawkins are a typical harried big city couple in desperate need of a vacation. She's exhausted and dreams of a luxurious Caribbean cruise where ship attendants will pamper her. He dreams of remote unpopulated areas where he can leave the maddening city hordes behind and enjoy the grandeur of nature with his strange little dog, Big Mack. They eventually compromise and rent a houseboat in the Canadian wilderness. They are both enjoying their idyllic get-a-way until the worst storm in centuries descends directly upon them. To their utter horror, Margaret and Tom soon discover that in the wilderness, there is absolutely nowhere to run--nowhere to hide. Lightning bolts fill the northern sky; thunderclaps echo through the night; 60 mile per hour winds hurl deadly debris and uprooted trees in every direction; and their tiny houseboat is tossed about on the now turbulent lake waters like a flimsy matchstick. Somehow, this violent storm also rips open a hole in time. Suddenly, the Hawkins family is trapped in a terrifying foreign world, a world populated by French-Canadian fur trappers, Ojibwa Indian warriors, and a man-eating grizzly. Sometimes, vacations just don't turn out the way you hoped they would.