Fired from her job as editor-in-chief of a New York fashion magazine, Zora Hughes travels to a South Dakota Indian reservation. She hopes to find answers to lifelong dreams her psychiatrist calls genetic memories. Zora dreams of a female ancestor who fled life as a slave and was aided in her journey to freedom by a Sioux warrior who would become her husband.

On the reservation, Zora meets Captain John Iron Hawk who aids and sometimes hinders her in her quest to find answers to the murder of her forebearer.

Zora sees the parallel between her life and that of her long dead ancestor's. Try as she might, she can't resist the lure of loving John Iron Hawk, a contemporary Sioux warrior.

But someone will do anything, including murder, to stop Zora from digging up the past.