On a warmer than usual spring day, Alex, a fifteen-year-old mixed-race boy hitchhiked his way from North Minneapolis to Duluth, Minnesota. His mother was dead—a victim of cancer, and his father left him with only a note to find his grandfather in Silver Bay. "Maybe he could take you in," it said. Alex had never met his grandfather. In fact, his grandfather never even knew he existed. His father, whom he called Pete was estranged from Alex's grandfather and had not communicated with him for over twenty years. Conflict with peers in school, racism, a young Anishinaabe girl, and a bitter man intent upon revenge crisscross his new life in Silver Bay. Two individuals, one young, one old, experience a rocky start to their newfound relationship and discover in the end, they may need each other.