In 1878, at Camp Robinson, Nebraska an improbable friendship forms between school mates twelve-year-old Makes the Song, the strong-willed daughter of Katie and Black Moon, fourteen-year-old Will McIntyre, who dreams of becoming a farmer, and sixteen-year-old Trent Fontenelle, who aspires to a military career. But hostilities between the Army and its Indian adversaries drive the friends apart. Years later, as the Lakota struggle to survive on reservations and Song struggles to find her place in the world, fate conspires to bring the trio together again. In these dangerous and uncertain times, which man will claim her wild heart? Idealistic, hard-working Will, now farming along the Niobrara, who has loved her from afar for so long? Or Trent, now Captain with the Seventh Cavalry, whose call to duty comes at a high price? Amid rising tensions over the spiritual movement of the Ghost Dance, the path to Song's true love leads to a creek lined with willows and cottonwoods called Wounded Knee.