One night four seemingly unconnected lives intersect: Peter Morgan, released after four long years in prison and vowing to redeem himself in his daughter's eyes; Carl Waters, a convicted murderer set free; Ted Lee, a San Francisco police detective who has been living for his job and falling out of love with his wife; and Fernanda Barnes, a mother of three children, left with debt she cannot repay after the death of her brilliant husband. On the night their lives collide, Fernanda's world is shocked by a devastating crime that brings Detective Ted Lee into her life. Racing against time, she must draw on strength she never knew she had if she hopes to save her family.

Recently widowed, and encouraged by government relocation schemes to move Native Americans off their reservations, Betty takes her four young children from their Ojibwe roots to make a new life in Minneapolis. As Betty struggles to keep her family and her dignity intact, her younger son Lester finds romance on the soon-to-be-demolished train, The Hiawatha, while his older brother Simon secretly protects his mother by taking a dangerous job as a construction worker, scaling the heights of the skyscrapers that, once completed, will never welcome him. Twenty years later, Simon is released from prison for a horrible crime of passion. His return to Minneapolis sets in motion the dramatic, inevitable conclusion to one family's fight to survive.