Alice never met her Army of the West officer father. She's raised by her Canadian trapper stepfather and feisty Indian mother. She can shoot a beaver eye at a hundred paces, doesn't know how to cook or sew, can fight blade up with knives, hunt bear on her own, and never wears a dress. This idyllic life in the Willamette Valley ends when circumstances force her mother to trade her to an old fur trader. Young Alice longs for family, love, and knowing where she fits in a violent Plains era. Alice's stories are found under her burnt-out trading post in South Dakota, then transcribed by the Buffalo Gap Historical Society.