John Smith was born to a young Indian mother in a rundown hospital on an unknown reservation and was adopted by an affluent white couple from Seattle, Olivia and Daniel Smith. Although his parents are loving and supportive and try to provide him with information about Indian cultures, he grows up both alienated from a white society that judges and excludes him and unable to connect with his Indian heritage.

This upbringing leaves him without a sense of belonging or a clear idea of his own identity, a confusion that manifests in multiple ways. Firstly, it feeds into his poor mental health, leading to a blurring of dream and reality, leaving him frequently confused, distracted, and plagued by auditory and visual hallucinations that further his alienation from those around him. Often, these hallucinations involve his old priest, Father Duncan, who, as a Spokane Indian and a Jesuit, represents the same internal conflict John experiences throughout his life. At other times, he obsessively imagines his own birth and how life could have been different had he been raised on a reservation by his Indian family. These fantasies are rose-tinted and stripped of the poverty and suffering experienced by many of the Indian characters who grew up on reservations, suggesting that his difficulties would not be so easily solved.