Yahzi, a strong Navajo woman captured in 1820 by the Spanish in Canyon de Chelly in what is now northeastern Arizona when she was a teenager, is determined to escape by whatever means necessary. In a forced marriage with a cruel man for seventeen years and pregnant, she manages to stampede a flock of sheep and flees in the confusion. But she faces even more difficulties in the unknown lands between the Spanish Nuevo Mexico frontier and her home in Canyon de Chelly. Nor will she find her real family anything like the one she has fantasized about for years.