In 1937, a young First Nations girl named Ashtecome is kidnapped along with several other children from a village as part of a deliberate Canadian policy to force First Nations children to abandon their culture in order to be assimilated into white Canadian/British society. Taken to a boarding school where she's forced to adopt Western Euro-centric ways and learn English, often under brutal treatment, she has the support of one sympathetic white teacher.

A husband and wife and their youngest son are murdered in this true story. Their two other sons are left to cope with their loss, but the local sherrif begins to suspect that one of the brothers committed the crime, and must convince the other to help him discover the truth.