The story is Junior’s, an intelligent and budding cartoonist with big dreams living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Junior decides to leave his rez school right before freshman year and trek to an all-white school for a better education. The Indians on the reservation see him as a traitor, and aside from the school mascot, Junior is the only Indian at his new school, where he must traverse his teasing peers and try to fit in. At home, he faces the devastating problems of poverty and alcoholism.