A casual note left on the windshield of a car. The death of an old dog. And author Kent Nerburn unexpectedly finds himself back on the Dakota reservation where more than a decade before he traveled with the elder, Dan, whose thoughts he chronicled in the classic of Native American studies, Neither Wolf nor Dog. Now almost ninety, Dan wants Nerburn to assist in the unlikely task of burying Fatback, the old Labrador who had been Dan's closest companion during his twilight years. Though the request makes little sense, Nerburn agrees out of respect for the tribal elder. Once on the reservation, he finds that Dan's purpose runs far deeper. Dan wants Kent's assistance in finding out what happened to his little sister, Rose Bear, who disappeared from a reservation boarding school almost eighty years before. Accompanied by Dan's friend, Grover, and an odd little dog named Charles Bronson who Dan is convinced was sent to him by Fatback, the three men embark upon a journey into the hidden corners of Dan's past. Their travels take them through dusty hilltop cemeteries and ghostly abandoned boarding schools, into the dark confines of sweat lodges and the easy laughter of family compounds deep in the folds of the Dakota hills. Over it all hangs the ghost of Dan's sister, Rose Bear, and the dark truths and secrets of life in the Indian boarding schools. As her story unfolds, Dan bares his heart on subjects ranging from Indians' notion of time to the education of children and the spiritual presence of the land.