Conger Beasley Jr. alternately recounts the events and details of the 1890 massacre of the Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee and his participation, one hundred years later, in the commemorative Big Foot Memorial Ride. The counterpoint and contrast between the two events produce a powerful effect; the history, including oral accounts from survivors of the slaughter, is sometimes so brutal that the reader needs to be taken away, if only into the cold and wind of a century later.

The contemporary ride in 1990 included Indians, Asians, Europeans, and white Americans. In the face of bitterly cold weather and other hardships, the journey became a pilgrimage to lay to rest the chronic turmoil that has haunted generations of Lakota.