On the eve of his 40th birthday, Patrick Gallagher, an anthropologist and documentary film producer, retreats to the rivers of Vermont to escape his past, to fly-fish and research the canonisation of Father D'Angelo, a priest who performed miracles during the influenza outbreak of 1918.

When Gallagher's fly-line catches on a submerged body, he is drawn into the investigation of horrific murders all linked by a series of mythological drawings and the century-old journal of a Sioux woman who survived the massacre at Wounded Knee.