A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows pregnant thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species. Evolution has reversed itself: woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. For Cedar Hawk Songmaker, this change is profound and deeply personal:...

When Klaus Shawano abducts Sweetheart Calico and carries her far away from her native Montana plains to his Minneapolis home, he cannot begin to image what the eventual consequences of his rash act will be. Shawano's mysterious Antelope Woman has stolen his heart -- and soon proves to be a bewitching agent of chaos whose effect on others is disturbing and irresistable, as she alters the shape of things around her and the shape of things to comes....

The lives and destinies of the Kashpaws and the Lamartines intertwine on and around a North Dakota Indian reservation from 1934 to 1984, in an authentic tale of survival, tenacity, tradition, injustice, and love.