At the tender age of 8, Shanoah was forcibly removed from her Cherokee Tribe and placed into a Bureau of Indian Affairs run boarding home. Nine years later she escapes from the institution in the dead of winter determined to rejoin her Tribe. Nearly dead of hypothermia and starvation, she finds refuge with the enemy: a white man named Michael. Michael shows Shanoah a side of the white man she has never experienced. She is torn between her feelings for him, and returning to her tribal family. As their months together come to an end, she is faced with a dilemma: return to her own tribe, or stay with the man who opened her eyes to a whole new world.