The boundaries between love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, and cooperation and competition among Native Americans and white settlers are explored in this stunning novel, set against the unforgiving wilderness of frontier Kansas in the mid-nineteenth century. Iris, India, and Singing Bird. Theirs is an uneasy alliance - a makeshift trinity of mother, daughter, and ambiguously holy spirit - that together forges a family of necessity. The fates of these women and their loved ones are inextricably linked by the powerful magic of the talisman known as the Life Stone. The adult eyes of India Baldoon Walker unfold the narrative: her mother's grinding journey west, including her murdered husband and stillborn baby, and the discovery of a Native American infant boy who becomes India's adopted brother, Boy Found. As the two children grow into adults, their individual heritages prove to be insurmountable and their harmonious co-existence is shattered.