NEWARK, N.J. — It is a long way from Nunavut to Newark.

For Jordin Tootoo, that unusual journey took him from the tundra through junior hockey stardom, a brother’s suicide, struggles with alcoholism and eight seasons as a fast-living fan favorite with the Nashville Predators.

Now Tootoo, the only Inuk to play in the National Hockey League, is a little-used 5-foot-9 forward trying to extend his career with the New Jersey Devils.

He tells the story of that journey in “All the Way: My Life on Ice,” an autobiography written with the prominent Canadian sports writer Stephen Brunt that was published this week.

“I am very honored to be a role model for the North and for the aboriginal community,” Tootoo, 31, said during an interview after a Devils practice last week. “And for me to open up and tell my story may inspire others from small towns or in the North who face some of the same problems I’ve had.”

After spending most of the last season with the Detroit Red Wings’ American Hockey League affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Tootoo made the Devils’ roster this month after a training-camp tryout. In 11 NHL seasons, he has 49 goals, 134 points, 71 fights and 821 penalty minutes in 545 games. He has not scored an NHL goal since February 2013.

“I know I’m a fourth-line player in the NHL, and I accept that totally,” Tootoo said.

Coach Peter DeBoer said this month that when Tootoo was on the ice, “you know there’s probably going to be contact,” a compliment for a player on the fringes of the lineup.

Nevertheless, Tootoo is a superstar in the Far North, where he returns every summer. He represents a lot there, not just as the only one of Canada’s 60,000 Inuit ever to play big-time hockey. He is also someone who has been affected by some of the same problems — substance dependency and suicide — that have troubled native communities across the continent.

Tootoo’s story begins in Rankin Inlet, a remote town of about 2,000 on the northwest shore of Hudson Bay. He was taught to hunt and fish on the trackless land and ice by his Inuit father (his mother is a Ukrainian-Canadian).

“The land — it’s a sense of peace,” said Tootoo, whose middle name, Kudluk, is a form of the Inuktitut word for thunder. “You respect the land; it respects you. For us, hunting and fishing is survival up north. You take nothing for granted because you don’t know the next time you’re going to see another caribou or seal. You could get lost when a storm brews up in an hour.”

But Tootoo’s father and mother also drank heavily, which led to a tense home life for the three Tootoo children. Jordin and his older brother Terence got out of the house as often as they could, spending hours every day at the town rink.

“We were two peas in a pod,” Tootoo said.

There was no organized hockey in Rankin Inlet — just a house league and frequent pickup games, at which the two Tootoo boys excelled. Jordin did not play organized hockey until he was 14.

“To be honest, I haven’t met anyone else in the pros who can say that,” he said.

At 14, he moved to Alberta and boarded with a family to play bantam hockey. With Brandon of the Western Hockey League, Tootoo became a star. He was chosen for the 2003 Canadian junior team and became a national celebrity during its run to a silver medal at the world junior tournament.

Throughout that period, Tootoo and his brother, who made it to the minor league East Coast Hockey League, drank and partied heavily. When Jordin was 19, Terence committed suicide. “All the way,” which became the title of Tootoo’s book, was a phrase Terence used in his suicide note. He was urging Jordin, then a Nashville prospect, to reach the NHL.

In the book, Tootoo wrote that he still had dreams in which Terence was with him but hanging back.

“He’ll wave at me and say: ‘Go ahead. Go ahead,’” Tootoo told Brunt.

After his brother’s death, Tootoo kept drinking and partying, raising the ante when he got to Nashville in 2003. He was a good-looking young athlete with an unusual back story and a charismatic personality. “When I was drinking, I was selfish because of my addiction to popularity and being out in the public eye,” Tootoo said. “I used that as a mechanism to create commotion with everyone. And if I got into trouble away from the rink, I made it up on the ice. I’d be in a game, get in a couple of scraps, and life is good.”

In December 2010, at the Predators’ request, Tootoo entered the substance abuse program run jointly by the NHL and the players union. He said he had been sober ever since, and last summer he was married.

Tootoo’s NHL career has been marked by fights, two suspensions for illegal play and accusations of dirty play from some opponents. Does he think about the toll all the fighting could take on his health?

“Since I’ve sobered up, I have clarity and a better understanding of how things work and what the consequences are,” he said. “But at the end of the day, if need be, I am a willing combatant. It’s in my blood. It’s always going to be in my blood.”

That may sound like a retrograde attitude as fighting in hockey is falling deeper and deeper into disrepute. But Tootoo said he had to fight throughout his life, one way or another, to get to the NHL.

“It has been a long, tough journey from a small town in Nunavut to where I am now,” he told Brunt. “And so far I’m the only one who made it.”