When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, fourteen-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.
Presents the author's diary which describes a rural North Dakota family's life during the Dust Bowl years, from 1927-1937, when the state suffered from economic hardships, restrictions on women, and family frustrations.
Summoned by his grandmother, Lipsha returns to the reservation where he falls in love with Shawnee Ray. He finds himself at crossroads torn between success and meaning, love and money, the future and the past.