When Ella sets out in search of a cure for her mother's cancer, she finds not only the bone-chilling cold of Nova Scotia's winter, but also feels the painful bite of a trapper's legtrap. Found unconscious by Stands Like a Tree, a Micmac, she is carried to her friend Minnie's house. When her friend Stands Like a Tree is eventually forced to leave the place of his birth, the Mohawks closing in on him, she sadly watches him paddle to his new lands. A year later, on the same shore she determines her future, but that future will not come without sacrifice.