When her mother is no longer able to take care of her, eleven-year-old Anneke takes her border collie, Sheera, and moves to a cave near her home in the Kootenay mountains. Although she knows how to survive and stay hidden in the woods, she is shaken by a close encounter with a cougar and a terrifying thunderstorm. Anneke may need to turn to the kind foster parents she stayed with several years earlier, but they are poor substitutes for the mother she misses so much. Why can't the doctors' find the right medication to control her mother's schizophrenia? Anneke finds comfort in Gram, who lost her own mother at an early age, and in her talent in woodworking, as she copes with a difficult years of changes and adjustments.