Snowden, North Dakota is a dying reservation town in a dying state, surrounded by hundreds of miles of prairie littered with the ruins of eight decades of economic decline. To half-Chippewa, half-white seventeen-year-old Dylan Erickson, this land is a little slice of heaven--the woods and fields, the endless skies that burn at night, and the Missouri River running through it all.
All of this is threatened by an oil boom.
As tens of thousands of workers pour into the state, the rural communities struggle to cope with the chaos. Housing prices skyrocket, the roads turn deadly from the explosion in traffic, and the cops are overwhelmed fighting the surge in drugs and crime.
But it's a fatal accident caused by Dylan's own self-destructive behavior that rocks the close-knit community and turns his whole world upside-down. In his search for a meaning in the accident and a way to atone for what he's done, he will discover the haunting meaning of the tragedy of beauty.
