Illyanne fills-in as a ship's cook on a lumber schooner and while aboard, she witnesses her world burn in the worst fire in U. S.

history. The 1871 Peshtigo Fire is history's lesser-known twin of the Great Chicago Fire.

The pillar of fire resembles the loving firelight in Exodus. It confuses and wounds the spirit of this half-Menominee Indian, sailor's wife.

Ashore, she must search for her family - her lifeblood - but nature and society have become enemies. The fire causes mass destruction and loss of life, travel is difficult, even dangerous.

Relief services are minimal and winter approaches. Yet, Illyanne crosses open water, treks through scorched landscapes in the northern Wisconsin wilds.

Did her family survive the fire? She struggles to keep hope and the faith Jesuit missionaries brought a century earlier. She cannot go on without her family.

She cannot go live with the tribe. She no longer knows them, having lived so long in the white world.

She is alone but something mystical drives her forward. Her husband and son left the homestead on their own adventure and now neither of them knows where the other is.

Readers have been enlightened by the look back in time to see how Americans, Indians and European immigrants, coped with a surprise cataclysmic event. It combines familiar notions: the American Indian/white interface of Dances with Wolves, the epic yearning for a missing loved one in Cold Mountain and the struggle of a harsh journey in The Road.

This book, at 314 pages, is about the endurance of family, limitations against the natural world, reserves of psychological and spiritual energy in a crisis, the steadfast guidance of the 'Star of the Sea', friendship, mixed cultures in America, and the romantic Golden Age of Sail. .