Cal Chetley is an extremely bright, engaging, undersized fifteen-year-old. Mike, Cal's older brother and one-time world-class high school/collegiate wrestler, left him and his mother behind years ago after a tragic car accident killed their father, an accident to this day Mike feels responsible for.

When a six-year-old child named Turtle is the sole witness to a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, she and her adoptive mother Taylor have a moment of celebrity that will change their lives forever. Turtle is claimed by Annawake Fourkiller, a Cherokee activist, to have been wrongly taken from the Cherokee nation. Fear of losing Turtle sends Taylor fleeing across the country with her mother Alice, pursued by Annawake. In the course of their journey,...

Complications arise throughout his family when churchgoing and respected community member Robert John Brown's caught hiding a barnful of migrant workers with no papers.