An unlikely love story of a Cree maiden from Canada's James Bay and a descendant of the first settlers of Northern Canada who came from the Orkneys of Scotland to work for the Hudson Bay Company three hundred years ago. A bittersweet tale of love, redemption, wisdom, racist attitudes, and marginalization of Canada's First Nations women spanning three hundred years into the present days of missing and murdered aboriginal women. While tracing a family's history, the novel also records the land's metamorphosis from a simple, nature-centred life to a complex world of trade, politics, intrigue, and the exploitation and degradation of the earth's resources.

The novel weaves a delicate fabric on interconnections between legends, fantasy, and cultural dislocation inspired by the nautical disaster of the 'Braer', an oil tanker which perished off the coast of Shetland Island, Scotland, in 1995.