Part One
Part One begins with the narrator coming home from a bad night of drinking and expressing his lack of emotion and distance from himself and his family. In the Part One we get to know about the character of the narrator's mother and father and the fact that both his older brother and father died.
His mother suddenly marries a guy who is in for it just for her property and to be a landowner. The narrator's father was a wanderer who spent most of his time in the bar making the white men laugh. His mother is described as decent-looking, handsome for a woman and cold-he always talks about her in her first name which further emphasizes the distance he feels from her; we never get a sense of mother and son connection, she is just a woman who happens to be his mother.
The guilt he feels for the death of his brother is immense, he is only living in the memory of that death along with his injured leg as a memento. We also get to know a bit about his heritage through his grandmother. She told him a story about her life, how she was one of the wives of a Blackfeet chief called Standing Bear. He was killed in a raid and she was out casted from the tribe because of her beauty. After Standing Bear's death she and the tribe had to survive a long winter. After more than twenty years she married a half-white and that's how Theresa came to the world, although there are suspicions about her real father, which later will prove to be justified.
In the city, among people, especially white people, the narrator feels more alienated than ever. Part One ends with him ripping the letter a white man, a priest from Harlem, sent to his mother.
Part Two
The narrator takes another chance in finding his wife. This time he gets involved with the airplane man he met in the bar previously. The man is a criminal and sees the narrator as naive and wants to take advantage of him: he wants to cross the border to Canada and promises a car and a money reward to the narrator but, in his story of the plan the narrator is the one who should distract the police while he crosses with the car and the reward money he promised him.
While making plans with the airplane man he sees his wife and gets a sudden urge to reunite with her-forgetting the gun and razor. It seems as though the narrator only found appreciation for her when he lost her, he suddenly remembered the reason he took her home in the first place; he gets an urge to take a leap into happiness with her but, that is soon gone along with her brother's fist in his face. Beaten and exhausted he wants to escape the city and the people but, most of all, he wants to escape himself.
Part Three
The narrator' grandmother died and Theresa and Lame Bull are preparing for funeral. In the flashback of the day the narrator and his brother were chasing the cattle it is finally revealed what happened, how Mose died. The memory of this night and the death of his grandmother bring the narrator to his breaking point-he is unable to find uselessness, meaning of a world where death is inevitable.
Part Four
The narrator visits Yellow Calf and discovers that he is actually his grandfather and Theresa's real father and even though the man doesn't tell him this directly he describes that he felt the truth in his blood. We get to know the truth about what happened to his grandmother once she became Standing Bear's widow, how the entire tribe out casted her and left her to die except Yellow Calf who was a hunter then and he took care of her.
In a climactic ending the narrator is trying to rescue a stupid cow that got stuck in the mud. He expresses his anger at the entire world, at all the people while he is struggling to get the cow out, cursing the poor animal along with everything. The cow is finally out and his old horse fell down out of exhaustion. The narrator is lying on the ground thinking how his brother and father were the only people he loved. He doesn't feel uncomfortable lying in the mud while rain is falling down on him.
Epilogue
In the epilogue they bury the narrator's grandmother. The narrator is wearing a suit that belongs to his father and he admits that Lame Bull looks good in his suit as well. His mother is crying while Lame Bull is saying some final words for the old woman. The narrator is thinking that he wants to bring his wife back and marry her this time for real, meaning that he is finally ready to move on and try to find happiness.
