"Bear Medicine" tells the story of a young half-blood Lakota, Rachel Hennessy, who is drawn by personal heartbreak from a comfortable life in white suburbia to the rigors of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where her grandfather, Bill Whitefeather, is a shaman. There, Bill reveals that Rachel is destined to become the most powerful of all Lakota healers, a bear medicine woman. Weak and broken by the recent tragedies in her life, Rachel is sure she has nothing to give, yet she finds herself walking a new spiritual path. In so doing, she develops power she never suspected she had and the wisdom to help heal her native people. Even more important, Rachel finally confronts the evil that has haunted her family for three generations in the person of Raven Elkhorn, a wicasa winyan - evil witch doctor. In the end, Rachel, renamed Jade by the Lakota, learns that healers must first heal themselves, that evil is the result of wounds left to fester, and that the truest medicine is compassion.