House Made of Dawn employs a nonlinear narrative to follow its protagonist, Abel, as he navigates coming of age as a Native American man in a changing society. The story opens with Abel running along an empty Southwestern landscape. It then shifts back in time to July 20, 1945, as Abel returns from World War II to Walatowa, his home in the Jemez Pueblo. He is greeted by his grandfather Francisco, his only remaining relative. Coming home sends the addled, lonely Abel into a spiral of memories about his childhood in Walatowa as he struggles to reconnect with his homeland and community. These memories include the deaths of Abel’s mother and brother when he was a child.
A white woman named Angela St. John employs Abel to cut wood for her at her house near the reservation. She is struggling with her own mental health issues surrounding her pregnancy, and she finds herself at once irritated and aroused by Abel’s stoic demeanor. Angela and Abel begin a sexual relationship. Around the same time, Abel is ritually beaten during a ceremony by an albino man. Abel later stabs the albino man to death, though the narrator provides no insight into Abel’s reasoning.
In January 1952, a Kiowa priest named John Big Bluff Tosamah presides over a Pan-Indigenous peyote congregation in Los Angeles. His sermons reference the Bible, but he rejects Catholicism and other trappings of settler colonialism. He emphasizes the importance of the oral tradition, which he believes white people can never truly grasp after generations of cheapening and corrupting the power of words. Interspersed with his sermon are Abel’s confused recollections of his murder trial, his prison sentence, and his sexual relationship with his social worker Milly.
The narration then shifts to the first-person perspective of Ben Benally, who is Abel’s friend and roommate after Abel is released from prison and relocated to Los Angeles. After meeting each other at work in a factory, Ben tries to help Abel adjust to urban life. Unfortunately, Abel’s reserved nature and occasionally violent temper prevent him from making a life for himself the way Ben has done.
Abel quits his job when his supervisor becomes too controlling, and he ends his friendship with Tosamah when the priest laughs at Abel one too many times for being “uncivilized.” Abel finally snaps after a corrupt policeman named Martinez bullies and beats him in an alley. Abel decides to get revenge on Martinez, only for Martinez to beat him even more brutally. Abel ends up in the hospital, where Ben looks after him and Angela pays him a visit. She has given birth to a son since she last saw Abel, and she tells her son stories about a hero based on Abel.
Abel decides to return to his reservation. The night before he leaves, he and Ben attend a party with other local Native Americans to celebrate Abel’s last night in Los Angeles. At the party, Abel sings the traditional Navajo songs that Ben taught him, including one about a “house made of dawn.”
Abel returns to Walatowa at the end of February 1952. Francisco is dying, and Abel forces himself to push through his alcoholism and the remaining pain from Martinez’s attack to care for his grandfather. As Francisco dies, he reflects on his life in Walatowa, speaking in a jumbled mix of Spanish, English, and Jemez about meaningful experiences throughout his life. In his last memory, Francisco recalls losing stamina in a race but continuing to run despite being out of breath.
After Francisco dies, Abel prepares his grandfather for burial and performs a ritual over the body. He then wakes the priest, Father Olguin, and demands he bury Francisco. Abel walks to the edge of town, where he sees a distant group of runners as the sun rises. He starts to run alone across the landscape, revealing the context of the opening scene of the book. Abel continues to run despite his exhaustion, and as he takes in the beauty of the natural world, he sings the song of the house made of dawn.
