Nushèmakw, a gifted Onondaga girl with a stubborn conscience, is an endless source of worry for Clan Mother, and she is forced to leave her village for her father’s home among the Unami People Down the River. There, she encounters heartache so devastating that she retreats to Little Turtle Island for a year of solitude.

On the other side of the ocean, a Welsh boy, Owen ap Madoc, tends the flocks at Bentley Manor, where he wins the favor of his Lord and Lady who send him to Greyfriar and then Oxford to apprentice as a scribe. Events quickly turn cataclysmic, and Owen flees Oxford for Bristol, where he escapes on a ship that sets sail the next morning.