In America's sixties and seventies, Jack is working in a minimum-security prison for young men when he meets Marlon—and Marlon has a story to tell. Spared the horrors of a hardened adult prison, he is forced to accept his current situation while telling Jack a bit about himself.

He and his friends ill advisedly stole a car and rolled it along while drinking. Their theft concluded in an accident. People got hurt, and Marlon fled. The next morning, though, the reservation police arrived at his home and arrested him, which is how he ends up talking to Jack.

Marlon's reservation houses about two thousand American Indians. By day, his neighbors are all for peace and love; at night, when they get drunk, violence spreads. It's a horrible way to live, forcing Marlon to struggle with his identity while fighting racial inequality. The Way of the Buffalo offers a fictionalized inside look at this tumultuous age of flower power through the eyes of a Native American youth who can't find meaning in a crazy world.