Roots take on a deeper meaning for Nora Murphy when she gets a job at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. As she makes more Native American friends, the great-great-granddaughter of Irish immigrants becomes more self-conscious.

How did her forebears come to own that stand of sugar maples in Stearns County? Who owned it before? What happened to them?

Her questions started a quest that has occupied Murphy for 20 years and challenged all her assumptions about her place in this country.

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