When Mollie's boyfriend Jack dies on the reservation, she is asked to leave the reservation by her boyfriend's sister for not being one of their own, aside from Mollie's son. Mollie is forced to pack up her belongings and her children and move to northern California, right into a gang infested neighborhood.

A father gives his daughter an unorthodox upbringing on the fringes of the Alaskan underworld in the 1960's and 70's.

Lily and her three youngest children join her husband David Sutton, a doctor in an isolated northern Alberta town. Their eleven-year-old son arrives later from boarding school. David conceals a dark secret which caused the family to leave England without telling anybody. They befriend a neighbor Rosanne, who throws out her boyfriend after he beats her up in a bar. Lily, who is very English and out of place in the town, hires the half-Native Rosanne as a housekeeper, and eventually the two women become good friends, until the secret emerges again.