Prescott explores the historical and contemporary effects of the loss of one of the world's most complex languages: Tlingit. There are fewer than 300 fluent Tlingit speakers left in the world. In Southeast Alaska, many are involved in the Tlingit language and cultural revitalization including Prescott and her family.

Tova Agard's world is literally falling apart: she's just been disowned by her father in a violent confrontation over her sexuality, and climate change is about to wreak havoc on the world around her. In the midst of catastrophe Tova meets Smithsonian Institute's ethnologist John Swanton on an Alaskan-ferry time machine, trapping Swanton on Tova's small hometown of Wrangell Island. Tova convinces Swanton that the island's contemporary stories are worth collecting despite their strangeness: in Tova's oral traditions, a woman becomes a bear, a man marries trees, a UFO hunts deer, and the dead...