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Intro
The narrator and the trickster god Coyote discuss the best way to begin a story. Coyote has a dream that eventually takes the form of GOD. The narrator says that in the beginning there was water.
From here, the story splits off into several different directions, weaving back and forth between plotlines and time periods. At the center of the story are four Indian elders who go by the names Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye. The precise identity and age of these elders is somewhat mysterious, and they appear both as characters in the story (as four Indians who have escaped from the psychiatric hospital where Dr. Hovaugh works) and as narrators of the story.
The first of the novel’s four parts introduces the characters Lionel, Alberta, and Charlie Talking Bear, who are all Blackfoot Indians with connections to the small town of Blossom and who are currently caught in a love triangle. Lionel is about to turn 40 and faces criticism from his aunt Norma that he needs to do more with his life. Norma thinks Lionel is too much like his uncle Eli. Lionel lost a university job after a misunderstanding with the police, and now he sells televisions and stereos for the white man Bill Bursum. Meanwhile, Alberta wants a child but is afraid to commit to a relationship with either Lionel or Charlie.
The first part also introduces Dr. Hovaugh and Babo, who work at a psychiatric hospital in the United States and who field questions from Sergeant Cereno about four old Indians who have run away.
Interwoven with these plots is a creation story featuring First Woman. She lives together with Ahdamn in a garden for a while until an argument with GOD motivates her to leave.
Continuing the story at Blossom, Latisha, Lionel’s sister, owns a restaurant. She used to be married to a white man named George, but she was unhappy, and he beat her. Her uncle Eli has gotten involved with protesting the construction of a local dam, and he often argues with an employee of the dam construction project named Sifton. Eli used to be married to a white woman named Karen, who was awed by an annual Blackfoot tradition called the Sun Dance but who sometimes failed to understand Eli’s situation, due to the fact that she herself came from wealth. Charlie thinks back to the past when he lived in Hollywood with his father, the actor Portland Looking Bear, who appeared in some famous Westerns but never as a hero.
The second creation story in the novel follows Changing Woman, who gets recruited by Ahab to look for a white whale but instead finds the black whale Moby-Jane.
Dr. Hovaugh and Babo take a car across the border into Canada in order to track down the four Indians who escaped from the hospital. They head toward Blossom. In Blossom, Lionel prepares to celebrate his 40th birthday with several people he knows, including Alberta. Charlie has also made a surprise visit to town to try to win Alberta over. Meanwhile, flashbacks of Eli’s life reveal how Karen got sick, and then just when she seemed to be recovering, she got hit by a car. This is what caused Eli to leave Toronto and move back to Blossom.
At Bursum’s store at Charlie’s birthday celebration, Bursum plays an old Western, but to everyone’s surprise, the Indians win and kill John Wayne. Coyote interrupts the story and apologizes for dancing, which seems to have caused the strange Western and the chaos in Blossom.
In the third creation story, Thought Woman comes to the River, and it lulls her to sleep and carries her down its current.
Back in Blossom in the present, Alberta realizes that she might be pregnant. The escaped Indians—Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye, and Ishmael—have joined up with Coyote and have finally arrived in Blossom, claiming to want to fix the world. They meet up with Lionel and take him to that year’s Sun Dance. All of a sudden, Coyote starts dancing and singing. It leads to an earthquake that breaks the dam near Blossom and returns the water to its natural flow.
In the fourth creation story, Old Woman floats on water and meets Young Man Walking On Water. The earthquake caused by Coyote is apparently so powerful that it also enters into this story.
One month later, the characters in Blossom deal with the aftermath of the earthquake. Eli died in the flood, but Norma, Alberta, and Latisha come together to rebuild his house. Lionel makes plans for a possible future with Alberta. Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye, and Ishmael go back to the psychiatric hospital, and Coyote apologizes for creating the earthquake, but then laughs. The narrator once again begins telling Coyote a story about how everything starts with water.
