Preface and Chapter One Summary

An Algonquin Indian legend tells how one honest woman was able to see the mystical qualities of a great chief, and was rewarded forever, while those who only pretended to see him for their own benefit were punished.

A woman wakes up lying on a gravestone at a church cemetery in Los Angeles. She has no memory of how she got there, and assumes she was mugged. Her head is throbbing painfully, she does not know her name. She recognizes certain things, such as the name of a famous actor, Alex Rivers, that appears on a billboard.

William Flying Horse is driving his truck in California, having seen the ocean for the first time. Here from his native reservation in South Dakota, the half-Sioux has lost his sense of direction and finds himself back in the Beverly...