Omishto is a sixteen-year-old Taiga girl whose name means "she who watches," and indeed throughout the novel she is a witness to profoundly important and mysterious events. She is still in high school and lives with her mother, stepfather, and sister in a small house in a subdivision. Omishto's mother has turned her back on Taiga culture and wants to pass as white. She has given up on Taiga beliefs and has joined a fundamentalist Christian church. Her husband, Herm, has a temper and also desires Omishto, although she successfully fends him off. Omishto's sister is almost completely assimilated into the white world, concerned with her boyfriend, her school friends, and with her boyfriend's car.

Omishto prefers to spend time with Ama Eaton, a woman of her mother's age and a kind of distant cousin. Ama lives in a ramshackle house on the boundary...