Vera, a young Aleut girl who lives with an elderly couple on a larger island so that she can attend school, returns home for the summer of 1942 to visit her mother and friends. But when the Japanese launch an air attack on the Aleutian Islands, the U.S. government reacts by ' evacuating' most of the Aleut population. Vera and her village are forced to leave their small island of Kashega and spend the rest of the war in internment camps, facing sickness, suffer, and death.