At the turn of the twentieth century in a brothel on the shores of Lake Superior, two Finnish immigrants, brothers Carl and Juhani Jarvinen, find great comfort in the generous bosom of one woman. For one man she is the end, for the other she is just the beginning …

So begins a family saga, paralyzed and propelled by love. From the red-stained rim of Minnesota’s Mesabi Range, to the elegant but dysfunctional home of Duluth’s most celebrated iron financier, Carl Jarvinen would sacrifice everything to hide his past: a curse on his descendants as they ride the decline of the steel industry decades later.

Yet for every man who would deny the past, another is forbidden to remember. Such is the life of Leonard DeFoe, an Ojibwe Indian sent to an American Indian Boarding School in Pipestone at the age of five. From there and beyond, young Leonard must learn how to survive in a world that would prefer to see him dead…