Living in the logging area of northern Wisconsin during the early 1900s, thirteen-year-old Jeremy helps his uncle carve a statue of a Chippewa maiden as a tribute to the vanishing culture of her people.
Tells the story of the carvers and their rise from subsistence farmers to celebrated artisans. The creations of the wood-carvings range from angels, mermaids, devils, and skeletons to dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, and nahuals or animal people.
In 1890s Cripple Creek, Colorado, when young Mary McHugh's father loses his leg in a mining accident, she tries to help, both by earning money and by encouraging her father to go back to carving wooden figurines and playing piano.
Rob, who passes the time in his rural Florida community by wood carving, is drawn by his spunky but angry friend Sistine into a plan to free a caged tiger.
The widow McDowell and her seven-year-old son Thomas ask the gruff Jonathan Toomey, the best wood-carver in the valley, to carve the figures for a Christmas creche.
