Bottle fever has Nels Jensen by the throat. Swindled out of his summer’s pay, he heads to the logging camps of Northern Minnesota, only to discover he is blacklisted at reputable operations. He is neither a thief nor a liar, but he cannot prove his innocence.

Widow Solveig Rognaldson is left alone with heartache and a mortgage. Without a well-paying job, she will lose her Foxhome farm. Her son marries and moves away. Though she feels too old, she musters courage to strike out on her own. She has to save the farm by herself. She has no one else.

Trouble follows Sister Magdalena, a jolly nun who struggles with rules. A giant of a woman, she is sent to sell hospital tickets to lumberjacks working the forests of Minnesota. It is dangerous work, and those with a ticket receive free health care if they are injured. She travels alone to isolated logging camps in the dead of winter, sometimes by snowshoes. The jacks call her Sister Lumberjack.

These three lives intersect at Starkweather Timber, a haywire logging camp, where everything goes wrong. Their unique friendship turns their lives in unexpected directions.