Set during the Ice Age, it tells the story of a trainee shaman, from a tribe of European early modern humans, who must learn the skills to survive and to aid his people.

The novel begins with Loon, a boy from a tribe of Ice Age humans who call themselves the Wolf Pack, being stripped naked and sent into a lonely valley where he is expected to try to survive alone for two weeks as a test of manhood.

During his trial he encounters a group of Neanderthals (a species of human whom his band calls 'the Old Ones') who attack him, and he injures a leg while escaping them, an injury that will trouble him for the rest of his story.

The next section of the novel describes Loon's life among the Wolf Pack, a small band of hunter-gatherers who migrate according to the seasons, hunting caribou in the winter, fish and deer in the summer.

Loon's parents are both dead, and he is being raised by Thorn to be a shaman, teaching him about the spirit world and the stories of his people in addition to more practical survival skills.

Every summer, the Wolf Pack attends a festival called the 'eight eight' where the various local bands meet to dance and share stories, and where the shamans corroborate their astronomical observations.

Life returns to normal for Loon and Elga, but Thorn is troubled by the ghost of Click, who haunts him, apparently in anger at the way his body was treated.

Knowing that the Jende will demand recompense for the attack on them, Thorn proposes that Loon offer them a set of the snowshoes that he has been testing and improving, which are made from strong barks unavailable to the northmen.

The text of the novel does not explicitly identify its geographical or temporal setting because it is told from the point of view of characters who lack our modern understanding of the world.