In the early twentieth century a bear frightens a team of horses into plunging to their deaths from off a hill near a proposed railroad route through wilderness Alaska. In 1974 young Californians Thomas Findlay and Emily Wells dig post holes for a cabin on that very hill and unearth a human bone. The discovery shatters their struggle for stability and their attempt to start their lives over, propelling the couple toward their own tragedy as their story intertwines with one that unfolded in 1927, where the hill they hope to build on was the site of love, loss, and deadly violence.