Miley Petrowski is the novel’s 24-year-old protagonist, and the novel is largely told through her first-person narration. Her experiences are loosely based on the biathlete Kari Swenson, who was abducted by survivalists in 1984. Miley embodies the novel’s theme of The Coexistence of Human Vulnerability and Strength. At the beginning of the narrative, she is depicted as an outwardly resilient young woman who is dealing with unprocessed trauma. Miley is haunted by two events: her mother’s tragic death in a car crash, and Miley’s substandard performance as a biathlete in the Beijing Olympics. While she focuses on rebuilding her physical strength, she suppresses emotions she associates with weakness, such as grief, guilt, and love. Her phantom shoulder pain, which has no physiological cause, symbolizes her futile attempts to deny these feelings.

Miley is depicted as “a trailblazer in every sense of the word” (115). Fiercely independent, she follows her own path in life without the help or approval of others. In a more literal sense, this self-sufficient attitude leads her to explore the labyrinthine trails of the Frank Church Wilderness alone. In the novel’s early chapters, Miley’s strong sense of autonomy works both for and against her.