A graduate student, conducting research on the Crow Reservation in Wyoming for her PhD, discovers a sketch on a piece of old birch bark that may show the location of gold hidden more than 100 years earlier by a Crow chief. When Beth Richardsons niece, who lives with the graduate student, goes missing, Parker Williams joins Beth in a desperate search throughout Yellowstone National Park to find her. The shooting of a Yellowstone security official and two murders in Yellowstone complicate the search and bring bizarre twists and turns that culminate in confronting a foundation of the American justice system with ethical and legal questions.