Joshua Lightfoot is the last surviving member of his Native American family. Engrained in him by his race, is the belief that the Great Spirit was the Supreme Creator who held everyone's life in balance. Joshua is in the minority spiritually, as well as racially, as he struggles to harmonize his beliefs with those of the majority of the Christian people associated with his life. His family inheritance includes the responsibility of managing a large tract of forested land granted to his grandfather with the provision that it be preserved in its wilderness state, and managed by the Lightfoot family, and heirs forever. In order to sustain this responsibility, he has to take a wife and be blessed with heirs. Joshua struggles to preserve the peaceful independent existence of a handful of dedicated families and Indian laborers who work the land for the Lightfoot family. The young master of the Hermitage has to prove to himself, and those who work for him, that he is a worthy and creditable leader, as his father was before him. While he has a deep desire to marry a full-blooded Indian girl, destiny provides the circumstance and the setting for him to meet Abby Geldman, an Irish immigrant girl just out of finishing school. The story unfolds around the events leading up to the great blizzard of 1888 and its effect upon the lives of the inhabitants in the small, remote mountain village of Twin Bridges, located in the North Country of New York State.