When his wife suddenly leaves, Gharrett Graywood's devotion to their one-year-old son, Bobby, only increases. Friends in his Anchorage community-fellow instructors, medical professionals, aviators, and parents-round up his extended family. But they can do little beyond support when Bobby's ADHD becomes compounded with increasing seizures of unknown origin. Desperate for his son to have a normal life, Graywood searches for the cause of Bobby's mysterious disease. Centered in Alaska, Spirit Made Smaller explores spiritual themes against the harsh backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness as Graywood searches within and without for clues to help himself and his son cope. Discussions with Monroe Bearhead, Bobby's godfather of Athabascan and South Korean descent, take Graywood to new territory, sometimes hard to accept. A calming presence, Bearhead also challenges conformity and advises against holding to a closed-in perspective where spirit is made smaller. At the end, Phillip Douglas challenges us: At what cost does the truth come out? Graywood does discover the cause of his son's disease-where he never expected to find it.