In 1908, a man in dusty traveling clothes appears at Muck Creek Farm seeking news of his long lost father. There he meets a lonely young woman who finds solace in the root cellar, where she makes cherry cordial and is visited by the ghosts of Indigenous ancestral relations. Their story is part of a saga stretching over one hundred years, including characters both real and richly imagined.

A west coast Nootka trader discovers an Ojibway girl on a river island, a girl who has crossed a continent in a series of gripping odysseys. A supply boat blows up and its owner disappears. A young woman nearly dies in obeying her great grandmother's last request.

The settings stretch from the Great Lakes and interior rivers of North America to the west coast of Vancouver Island, from an earthquake in San Francisco to a fire in Seattle.

Meanwhile, at Muck Creek Farm, a diverse group of settlers are living near an Indian reserve, where people in the Nisqually community struggle to maintain their history and survival.

Muck Creek is a story rich in quest, in romance, and in historical embellishments - events that not only happened, but how they might have happened.