Sixteen-year-old Franklin Starlight—referred to as “the kid”—saddles his old mare for a trip over the mountains to the mill town of Parson’s Gap, British Columbia. His father Eldon has asked him to come, but he doesn’t know why. His guardian, the old man, warns him that his father will be very sick, perhaps dying, and reminds him that Eldon is dishonest.
When the kid reaches Parson’s Gap, he finds his father in a broken-down rooming house. Eldon takes the kid out for dinner and reveals that he wants the kid to take him into the backcountry to bury him there. (His liver is failing after years of hard drinking.) He also wants to tell the kid about his past, because it’s all he has to give. The kid isn’t sure at first, since his father has drifted in and out of his life and feels like a stranger to him. It was the old man (his guardian) who’d taught him how to survive school, to track and hunt, and to love the land. However, he agrees to the plan. Soon the men and the mare are headed into the mountains with a small pack of supplies.
On their first night in the wilderness, Eldon is impressed with Frank’s skill in setting up camp and fishing. He begins talking about himself, telling Frank that his parents, Frank’s grandparents, were half white and half Ojibway. They spent all their time traveling from job to job and didn’t have time to learn wilderness survival. He tells Frank they’re out here in the woods because he “owes” his son.
Frank thinks back to his earliest memory of Eldon, when he was almost six. Eldon had stayed at the farm briefly, leaving some money in a jar for the kid. The old man had explained that Eldon is someone he used to know very well, and that he drinks because things have gotten so broken inside him that they’re hard to fix. About a year later, Eldon returned and told the kid that he was his father, then disappeared again.
On the second day of their journey, Frank helps Eldon up a steep trail to a cliff that’s covered with sacred Indian paintings. He’s always loved coming here to sit and think about what the pictures mean and what they might reveal about who he is. Eldon says he was always too busy trying to survive to think about “Indian stuff.” That night, they take shelter in a cabin with a half-Indian woman named Becka Charlie. Though Eldon finds Becka to be nosy and critical, he softens when she guesses why he’s traveling West in order to die and be buried in the “warrior way”—it’s an effort to die with honor. Becka’s words prompt Eldon to tell Frank the story of his childhood.
After Eldon’s father died in the Second World War, he began traveling and working wherever he could in order to provide for his mother. Eldon became best friends with Jimmy Weaseltail, who became like a member of the family. One summer, the friends became accomplished logrollers in British Columbia, working under a foreman named Jenks. Before long, Jenks became intrigued by Eldon’s mother and started having meals with the family; then he and Eldon’s mother began sleeping together. Within a month, Eldon saw evidence that Jenks was abusing her. When he and Jimmy caught Jenks in the act, Jimmy attacked Jenks, nearly killing him. Eldon’s mother defended Jenks and told the boys to run. Eldon never saw his mother again.
Frank calls his father a coward for never going back; it has cheated him out of a grandmother and deepened his sense of not knowing who he is. As Eldon sleeps, however, Becka suggests that Eldon was brave to tell what most would rather forget, and that our stories are all we are.
The next day, when the kid and his father continue their journey, they cross paths with a juvenile grizzly. Frank succeeds in confronting the bear. Later he tells Eldon that out here in the wilderness, you just do what you have to in order to survive. Soothed by the herbal medicine Becka gave them, Eldon tells Frank to pour out his remaining whisky.
The kid recalls traveling to Parson’s Gap when he was nine to see his father. The old man accompanied him. They found Eldon in a crumbling rooming house, dancing drunkenly with a woman. Before he and the old man left in anger, Frank told his father that he didn’t know anything about having a father, except for what Eldon showed him through his actions.
The following year, for his tenth birthday, the kid visited Eldon by himself. At first, things looked promising; Eldon was living in a tidy boarding house and even planned a birthday outing for his son. After a blissful afternoon of fly-fishing, however, Frank discovered that his father had been sneaking whiskey the whole time, breaking his promise. Frank (an experienced tractor driver) was forced to drive his drunken father home in the pickup. A couple years later, Eldon promised to visit for Christmas. When he failed to show up, Frank was furious with himself—after all he’d witnessed, he should have known better than to hope.
The following day, Eldon’s condition worsens. By evening, he and the kid arrive at a ridge Eldon had hoped to reach. The valley is filled with a beautiful turquoise river and ringed with snowcapped mountains. Eldon visited this place once before, and it’s the only place where he ever felt as though he fit. That’s why he’s chosen to die here. He begins telling Frank a story he needs to hear—of how he once killed a man.
In 1951, Eldon and Jimmy enlisted in the Royal Canadian Regiment to fight in Korea. More loyal to Jimmy than to the war effort, Eldon committed himself to becoming the best soldier he could be. Sitting in a trench outside Busan, Eldon swore to Jimmy to make sure that if he got killed, he’d receive a warrior’s burial. Soon after, they were sent on a reconnaissance mission, and Jimmy got fatally wounded. Knowing his screams would give away their position, Jimmy signaled to Eldon to kill him. Eldon stabbed his friend to death, and his body was never recovered, so Eldon was unable to keep his promise to bury Jimmy. He’s never admitted this story to anyone before.
The next morning, Eldon is worse, but he’s determined to talk to the kid about one more thing: Frank’s mother. After the war, Eldon was in bad shape, drinking to forget his memories and working odd jobs in Parson’s Gap to afford his binges. One day, he was drinking at his favorite dive, Charlie’s, when he noticed a graceful, long-haired woman dancing to the jukebox. An older man, who introduced himself as Bunky, sat down with Eldon and admired the woman, Angie, too. When Angie’s dancing partner, Dingo, bullied a weaker drunk, Bunky stood up to him. Soon Angie joined their table, and Eldon fell in love with her. However, she was attracted to Bunky.
A week later, Bunky drove into Parson’s Gap and hired Eldon to put up 10 acres of fencing on his farm; Eldon stayed on the farm for a couple of weeks. Angie was living there now, too. Each day, Angie brought him lunch and told him about her life, and in the evenings, Angie told Bunky and Eldon stories she made up on the spot. Eldon grew increasingly attracted to Angie, and she hinted that she felt the same, but he resisted opening up to her. He could see how much Bunky loved Angie, and he felt guilty about his own feelings—all the more since he’d stopped drinking.
On Eldon’s last day on the job, Angie visited him in the pasture, and he finally opened up to her a little. They ended up making love in the field. That night, Eldon, guilt-ridden, tried to avoid everyone, but Angie climbed to his loft, and they made love passionately. Bunky discovered them and was furious. But after Eldon and Angie admitted their love for one another, Bunky wept brokenly. He told Eldon that if he and Angie were going to build a life together, he must treat her right, or Bunky would come and find him. He gave them the keys to his truck and some cash and told them to be gone before he returned.
Eldon tells Frank that for the longest time, he kept his promise and didn’t drink. For the first time, he even felt he could settle down contentedly. But the following fall, Angie found out she was pregnant with Frank. Eldon’s fears of inadequacy awakened the old darkness in him; he believed he was destined to destroy everyone he loved. He began drinking in secret to cope with his fear and shame. One night, Eldon drove home drunk from a tavern and discovered Angie in an agonizing breech labor. He got her to the hospital, but she died as the baby was delivered. The doctor said if he’d gotten home in time, she might have lived.
Eldon believed that his loving Angie had killed her, and he feared he would hate Frank because of this. In the only deed he was ever proud of, Eldon brought Frank to Bunky (who, he confirms, is the old man) when Frank was a newborn. Though Bunky was devastated by the news of Angie’s death and blamed Eldon, he loved Frank instantly and quickly decided to raise him for Angie’s sake. After telling Frank this, Eldon is spent. He overlooks the valley one last time, moaning “I’m sorry.” That night he dies in his sleep.
The next morning, Frank buries his father in the traditional warrior way. When he gets back to the farm, he sees himself in the old man’s working rhythms and smoothly rejoins the comfortable home routine. After telling Bunky Eldon’s whole story, Frank also tells Bunky that Bunky has always been a father to him. That night, he overlooks Bunky’s land and imagines he sees a traveling band of Indians waving warmly to him, making him feel connected to an ancestral line he’s never known. Then he goes back to the cabin where the old man is waiting for him.
