Mother Nature struggles to maintain equilibrium in a changing world while fire, disease, logging, human displacement, and war repeatedly destroy forests of centuries-old trees. Split Toe, a deer chosen at birth for a unique education, travels through time to understand the interconnected workings of a Michigan forest. He meets humans along the way: Ice Age hunters who trap and kill a mastodon; Mukwoh, a young Ojibwe hunter who stalks Split Toe through swamp and forest; loggers clear-cutting Michigan’s white pines; Edra, a woman advocating for the trees; Angus and Grace, pioneers who become a first generation of family farmers; scientists from the future studying the impact of nuclear radiation.

Split Toe witnesses two hundred years of conflict building between modern humans–who fight to control the natural world–and Mother Nature, who repeatedly reaches for balance. He wonders whether human ways will ultimately overpower Mother Nature, until he meets a boy who changes everything.