When Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn't surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. However, she stops dead in her tracks when she finds a rare drum-a powerful yet delicate object, made from a massive moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar, ornamented with symbols and dressed in beads of brass and red tassels-for without touching the instrument she hears it sound. From Faye's discovery, we trace the drum's passage both backward and forward in time and discover how it changes the lives of those whose paths it crosses.