Silko takes the reader on a Grand Tour of England and Europe in the era of Henry James (in a novel peopled with characters whose sensibility and language are brilliantly Jamesian), as seen through the eyes of a young Native American girl, Indigo, who is in flight from the destruction at the hands of the whites of her own tribal world. Indigo's fascination with the world of luxury and privilege never eclipses her instinctive faith in the traditions and the culture of her own people, or her desire to return home to what remains of her tribe and her family.