The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: George, Jean Craighead. Julie. HarperCollins Children's Books, New York, NY, 2020. Library Binding.

Julie Edwards, whose Eskimo name is Miyax Kapugen, has just arrived in the village of Kangik where her father, Kapugen, lives with his white wife, Ellen. Julie is struggling to accept changes occurring in the village due to an increase in technology and conveniences, along with the influx of whites who do all sorts of jobs in the region.

As the novel opens, Julie arrives in Kangik, a small village of about 50 people. She ran away from the town of Barrow where, at age 13, she was forced into an arranged marriage with a cruel man. She is now 14 years of age and has spent time alone on the tundra with only a wolf pack for company. Those wolves kept her alive. She feels a debt of gratitude toward them, and she is torn the moment she realizes that her father, Kapugen, was flying the plane from which a hunter killed the leader of that beloved pack. Julie realizes that she loves her father, regardless of his actions, and grudgingly accepts the fact that Kapugen married a white woman named Ellen who arrived in Kangik as a teacher. Julie and Ellen are cautious with each other until the day Julie is left to care for the musk oxen, a small herd that provides necessary income for the villagers. A young cow is in labor, and it is Ellen who knows what to do to help the cow deliver a healthy baby. Julie and Ellen are snowed in at a shelter in the musk ox enclosure for several days and bond during that time.

Meanwhile, Julie's wolves are under the leadership of a new male, Kapu, and they are struggling to survive. When they kill a musk ox from Kapugen's herd, he tells Julie that he agrees with the law in place in Minnesota, Ellen's home state. There, a man can kill a predator if it is encroaching on the human world. Killing livestock is considered reasonable cause to hunt down the predators responsible. Julie pleads for the chance to lead her wolves farther into the tundra in the hope that she can save them, and Kapugen reluctantly agrees. During her weeks with the wolves, Julie reconnects, creates a situation to combine two small packs, and leaves the wolves in a place where there are enough moose to keep them fed for awhile.

Julie settles into her new life, welcomes a new baby brother into the family, and attends school with Ellen. She wants to go away to college, but she knows that Kapugen will kill the wolves if they return. Julie initially tries to make Kapugen and Ellen see that man and wolf are very much the same and that wolves are necessary for a healthy world. She gives up on that tactic and appeals to Ellen's emotions instead. Once Ellen realizes that the wolves literally saved Julie's life on the tundra, she recants and says the laws of Minnesota are not applicable to the Arctic. Julie rushes to the musk ox corral where she fears Kapugen is already hunting the members of her beloved wolf pack, but she discovers that Kapugen has returned to the Eskimo way of thinking on his own. He releases the oxen herd from the pen, saying the village will simply have a free-ranging herd, and he accepts that the wolves have a place in their world. As Kapugen and Julie watch the oxen roaming free with the wolves nearby, a caribou herd arrives for the first time in more than a season, ensuring that the wolves and the villagers will have ample food.