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Clara Cay was nine in 1901. When she was thirteen, she was sent to the White Earth Indian Boarding School. Ten days later the school decided that Clara Cay could not be educated and that her  time would be better spent someplace else.  She was transported to Canton South Dakota,  where she was admitted to the Hiawatha Home for Insane Indians.

Unlike the teachers at the boarding school, the staff at the asylum didn’t care what language Clara spoke and they didn’t care what she thought about or how she prayed, but they were not taking any chances on where she went. Due to her  previous escape attempts,  Clara spent most of her time tied to a bed frame or a chained to a radiator. She would stare out the window and think about her mother and her home by  the no-ko-mis trees. She tried to remember  the day that her grandfather had shown her  the  Lutheran cemetery and explained how their bodies laid flat in stone boxes under the ground, aching to be let out and blind from the dark. She wondered what happened to the man in the gray suit, who had yelled at her father and pounded his fists – the man who took her away and  told her to forget.

After awhile,  Clara seemed to be made of only memories.

Four years later,  in 1907, a young intern named Carl Magnuson began working at the hospital. While making his rounds one morning, Carl noticed a young girl at the end of the hallway,  sleeping on the floor in a pile of dirty bedsheets. Like most of the patients, her hair was knotted in tangled nests and she appeared to weigh no more than the hospital gown and stockings she was wearing. Her arms were severely bruised and it looked as if she had a infected gash above her right eye.

Wondering if  he should find an orderly or just examine her  right there on the floor,  Carl Magnuson started wishing he was anywhere but  the Hiawatha Home for Insane Indians and silently  thanking God that it was only a six month internship.  Looking back down at the Indian girl by his feet, Carl was startled to find her staring up at him from behind her dark rimmed eyes. Oddly,  her face did not express a familiarity with the hospital, but instead quietly said, "How did I get here?" And though she had not spoken to anyone in over four years, Clara Cay said, "Izhaa."