A memoir, set in the 1980s, in which Tom Harmer shares the story of how a brush with death led him to seek out his old friend Okanogan Indian elder Clayton Tommy Jr., who schooled him in Native American traditions and spirituality, and brought him to a closer awareness of the earth.
Eighteen-year-old Indigo is looking forward to becoming a full-time waitress after high school graduation, but her life is turned upside down by a large check given to her by a customer who appreciates that she cares enough to scold him about smoking.
Vacationing on an Indian reservation off the coast of Washington, eleven-year-old Aaron becomes friends with Robert, a young Quileute Indian who is preparing for his spirit quest.
The arrival from Philadelphia of her spiteful nemesis Sally Biddle and the return of her corrupt ex-fiance William Baldt spell trouble for seventeen-year-old Miss Jane Peck, who has survived on her own in Shoalwater Bay, a community of white settlers and Chinook Indians in 1850s Washington Territory.
In the early 1900s as change comes to the village on Puget Sound where she lives, ten-year-old Ida Bowen worries about what is ahead for herself, her parents, beloved Little Grandma, and other members of the Suquamish people.
Having had osteosarcoma at the age of fifteen and having had her leg amputated as a result, the author relates her determination to overcome a potentially fatal disease and her later experiences as a therapist to cancer patients in a children's hospital.
