Ojinjintka (meaning Rose), or Winona, as that is her new given name, is an orphan of the Lakota Native Indigenous people. She is raised by John and Thomas, who fought together in the Civil War, though the book is set after the war is over. She works on the Tennessee farm alongside some former slaves. She's also educated and works and is loved by John and Thomas deeply. Tensions run high, especially after she experiences more trauma on top of the fact that she is an orphan, and that native Indigenous people and black people were seen as subhuman during these times. "Only when I spoke our language could they really see me." "It was the same day I started to shake too, just like that water. I shook for two weeks, and though I stopped shaking I could aver that something in me, deep within, was shaking a long time after." "Many said to me there was no one ever like her. In that was she was a story herself." "A human person finds a little medicine in another's sadness." "I wasn't cured of life then and maybe I am not now."