Omakayas and her family live on land her people called The Island of the Gold Breasted Wood Pecker. Even though more and more white people come to live on their land, life goes on as always. Every summer they build a new birchbark house, every fall they go to pick rice at a ricing camp, and in winter they feast on maple sugar and celebrate the end of winter. Omakayas is content and spends the days playing with her baby brother Neewo, fighting with her annoying brother Pinch, and having adventures with her crow Andeg. But her world is crushed when Omakayas faces another deadly enemy, one she cannot fight.