Apple Starkington is a mixed-race teenager (white and Indian) who has turned her back on her Native American heritage after being called a slur—though she never really knew how to “be Indian” in the first place, and she doesn’t fully fit in with the white world either. Her name, chosen by her dying Indian mother, carries a double meaning: “treasured apple of my eye” and the derogatory term for someone “red on the outside but white on the inside.”
After her wealthy white father kicks her out for the summer, Apple reluctantly agrees to visit her Native relatives on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota for the first time. There, she navigates culture shock, learns about Native customs and the Michif language, and searches for a connection to her deceased mother. She also faces hostility from a vengeful man who loved her mother in high school and resents Apple’s mother for marrying a white man. Caught between two cultures, Apple confronts stereotypes, builds relationships with her Indian relatives, and discovers what it truly means to find her place in a world divided by color.
