Fourteen-year-old social misfit Philip Reddy doesn't know what he's in for when he digs up an unidentified mound of earth near his island summer cottage. Beneath the earth lies the restless Anishinaabe spirit Tikumiwaewidung, who once lived and hunted on the lake. The spirit despises the white man for decimating his people, and drives Philip like a slave to properly lay to rest the Indigenous peoples who died during the colonisation of the lake area.