Set during the American Revolution and rooted in contemporary journals and accounts, this story vividly explores the cultural interface between whites and Indians, with treachery, kindness and redemption on both sides. Eli sets off in the morning mist, and disappears. Later, his canoe is found adrift on the Susquehanna River. His family gives him up for dead and tries to go on with their lives. Eli, however, is very much alive. But he has passed through the thin veil between his culture and that of the Senecas, a tribe known for both its bravery and its environmental insight. He is changed forever by the encounter.