Shannon "Shane" Running Deer holds the destiny of the American Indian nations in his hands—he just doesn't know it yet. He is Native American by blood, but has forsaken the old ways to embrace the "modern" world as a wealthy, highly successful trauma surgeon.

His orderly life begins to unravel when, seemingly by chance, Shane meets a mysterious homeless woman, Morning Dove, who shares his tribal background. When Morning Dove turns up in his trauma center as the victim of a terrible accident, her injuries heal miraculously, and Shane gradually finds himself drawn into increasingly realistic hallucinations of a pre-Columbian past—35 years B.C. The mystical heritage that Shane thought he had left behind almost seems to be coming back to claim him...

Finally, Shane is forced to accept that they are not hallucinations: Morning Dove is truly pulling him backwards in time. But to survive in the past, he must return to the old ways he abandoned so long ago. Shane has to convince an ancient tribal council he is the one who can lead the People to save their way of life from the impending European conquest.

But there are those who would see him fail in his attempts to stop the slaughter of the Native Americans before it happens. Kills Many, a powerful hunter and Shane's rival for Morning Dove's affections, will seemingly stop at nothing to see himself named leader. How far will he go for the power to control history? Will Shane be able to stop him without tearing the tribal alliance apart? And who or what is the mysterious Elk-Man, the living nightmare that plagues Shane's every vision—and seems to voice Shane's darkest, most destructive urges...