Audra Lawson Eaglefeather is no novice, free-lance prostitute. She has been a working girl in New Orleans for two years, and during that time, she has learned to do anything to make a customer feel good.

PART I begins the unhappy prostitute’s story in the present, with the full-blood Sioux Indian in her second year as a New Orleans call girl. Before leaving the Crescent City for a weekend tryst with her friend, Sally, Audra walks to a neighborhood cemetery and experiences the full impact of her unhappiness, as she sits alone and weeps. The crying woman does not hear the jogger, Father Joseph Hardister, a promiscuous priest who introduces himself to the disturbed girl, but hides his real identity from her. The brief encounter in the cemetery leads to an intense relationship between Hardister and Audra and creates an emotional preoccupation for the lonely Indian woman.

PART II tells how Audra became a prostitute. She recalls events from her childhood, especially the sexual molestation by her uncle and her subsequent developmental years. The daughter of Sioux Indians, Audra is nearing twenty when her mother dies from cancer and her drunken father falls from a second floor staircase and dies. Audra vows to move from Iowa’s freezing winters and makes plans to move to Florida.

PART III of the book returns Audra’s story to the present, as her relationship to Joseph suffers because of their lies to each other. Joseph tries to deal with his guilt about being a priest. Audra cannot continue her relationship to Joseph and work as a prostitute. Before they can declare themselves in honesty to each other, circumstances over which they have no control thrust them into individual crises, which threaten to destroy their growing love for each other.