Badlands is set in the forgotten soul of America, in the awe-inspiring landscape of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. To the cosmopolitan New York lawyer Adam, and his British lover, the lives of the Sioux are dark reminders of the massacre at Wounded Knee. Adam returns regularly to the Badlands, determined to make amends for America's past and "get back the land" for his friend, the charismatic young leader, Blackfoot.

But politics and ideology give way to a more desperate underlying quest; the need to give and to get love.

When Adam is obliged to return to New York, his lover does not want to accompany him: instead she plunges into life on the reservation, as if rediscovering her true home. The Badlands become her gateway into her true self. Enmeshed in desire and in need, with Blackfoot and his willful, adolescent daughter, Minnie, she finds herself awakening to new and infinite vistas of her own sexuality and deep running passions.

As she takes the young girl under her wing and enters Blackfoot's world, an intoxicating love emerges between them that transcends politics and destiny.