Tayo awakens on the reservation experiencing severe PTSD flashbacks, confusing his home with a Japanese POW camp.

Tayo attempts to kill Emo with a broken beer bottle after seeing Emo's trophy bag of Japanese soldiers' teeth.

The family summons medicine man Ku'oosh, whose traditional ceremonies fail to heal Tayo's war trauma.

Tayo's family sends him to Betonie, an unconventional medicine man living on the outskirts of Gallup.

Betonie performs the Scalp Ceremony with Tayo to relieve the trauma of having killed enemy warriors in combat.

Betonie tells Tayo he must find a woman, a mountain, and specific constellations to fully complete his healing.

Tayo sets out to recover Josiah's cattle, stolen by white rancher Floyd Lee during Tayo's wartime deployment.

Tayo meets a mysterious woman named Ts'eh while tracking his cattle, and the two become romantically involved.

Tayo cuts through Floyd Lee's high-tech fence and drives Josiah's stolen cattle off the ranch.

Tayo returns home with the recovered cattle, and the long drought on the reservation finally ends.

Ts'eh warns Tayo that his ceremony is not finished and that the destroyers are planning to stop him.

Harley and Leroy get Tayo drunk and abandon him at an isolated uranium mine for Emo to find.

Tayo chooses not to kill a drunken Emo at the mine, refusing to give the destroyers the violence they want.

Emo's group kills Harley, and Tayo escapes by crossing a river back onto the reservation at sunrise.

Tayo tells his story to the Laguna Pueblo elders in a kiva, and Emo is later permanently banished for murder.

Tayo, a Laguna Pueblo veteran, returns from World War II unable to function, plagued by PTSD and consumed by grief over his cousin Rocky's death. His destructive behavior — including a near-fatal attack on his fellow veteran Emo — forces his family to seek help from traditional healers. When the first medicine man fails him, Tayo is sent to Betonie, who performs a Scalp Ceremony and sets Tayo on a quest to recover his uncle's stolen cattle and end the reservation's drought. A mysterious woman named Ts'eh guides Tayo through the most dangerous parts of his journey, helping him confront both a white rancher and the forces of witchery. Emo arranges a deadly trap that forces Tayo to choose between killing and completing his ceremony, and Tayo's refusal of violence marks his true healing. He returns to his community transformed, and Emo's own destructiveness eventually destroys him.

The core journey from PTSD and violence to healing and ceremony.

Thought-Woman thinks the world into existence as a series of unfolding stories in the novel's opening verse.

Tayo spends years in a veterans' hospital heavily drugged, existing in a fog and unable to recall time passing.

Tayo falls into heavy drinking with Harley, Leroy, and Emo, using alcohol to numb his grief over Rocky.

Rocky and Tayo enlist in the military together; Rocky wants to leave the reservation and Tayo feels bound to protect him.

Josiah falls in love with Night Swan and agrees to buy drought-resistant cattle from her cousin in Mexico.

Night Swan and Tayo have sex before he leaves for war, and she urges him to embrace his mixed heritage.

Josiah's newly delivered cattle constantly try to wander south toward Mexico, requiring close supervision from Josiah and Tayo.

Tayo walks to Cubero after a night of drinking and finds himself outside Night Swan's long-abandoned apartment.

Arriving in Gallup, Tayo flashes back to his early childhood living under a bridge with his sex-worker mother.

Harley and Leroy intercept Tayo during his cattle search and pull him into a night of drinking with Helen Jean.

Helen Jean grows fed up with the veterans' endless war nostalgia and leaves the bar with another group of men.

Mountain Lion appears to a fallen Tayo on Floyd Lee's ranch, and Tayo honors the animal by leaving pollen in its tracks.

Patrolmen arrest Tayo for trespassing on Floyd Lee's ranch but abandon him to chase Mountain Lion instead.

Tayo and Robert return for the cattle and find a shield painted with ceremonial constellations in Ts'eh's empty home.

Emo spreads rumors that Tayo is mentally ill and arranges for army doctors to have him institutionalized.

Before and during the war, Tayo's world was defined by his family's struggles, Josiah's visionary cattle plan, and the guiding wisdom of Night Swan, whose lessons about embracing difference planted a seed in Tayo long before his ceremony began. These flashbacks and secondary scenes reveal the reservation's deep vulnerabilities — economic hardship, cultural erosion, and a drought that outlasted Josiah himself. During Tayo's post-war recovery, secondary characters including Helen Jean, the veterans at the Dixie Tavern, and the mythical Mountain Lion pull Tayo toward or away from his purpose at critical moments. The discovery of a painted shield in Ts'eh's abandoned home confirms that Tayo's path is guided by forces beyond the human world. Meanwhile, Emo's scheming to have Tayo institutionalized reminds readers that the forces of destruction operate on the reservation as surely as they do on the battlefield.

The people, places, and subplots that shaped Tayo's world.

An unnamed voice declares that stories are all we have to keep death and illness at bay.

Tayo is haunted by a recurring flashback to executing Japanese prisoners, one of whom resembled his uncle Josiah.

Tayo blames himself for the reservation's drought, believing a curse he spoke over the humid jungle caused it.

Ku'oosh's subtle contempt for Tayo's mixed heritage deepens Tayo's sense of not fully belonging on the reservation.

Betonie reveals that witchery — not white people specifically — is the true source of colonialism and all destruction.

Betonie tells a story about witches creating white people, completely reframing Tayo's understanding of who the destroyers are.

Tayo passes out at the bar and wakes to find Harley and Leroy badly beaten in a fight over Helen Jean.

Tayo spots the constellation Betonie described in his ceremony clearly visible through Ts'eh's window, confirming he is on the right path.

Mountain Lion in human form appears to Tayo after his escape from Floyd Lee's property and leads him back to Ts'eh.

Tayo discovers that the cattle corralled at Ts'eh's home have been physically maimed by abusive industrial ranching practices.

Tayo begins living with Ts'eh on her ranch, tending his cattle and watching Josiah's long-held dream finally come true.

Tayo and Ts'eh perform ceremonies together beneath a cave painting of the mystical elk A'moo'ooh.

Tayo recognizes the uranium ore veins running through the mine walls as a ceremonial sand painting created by the destroyers.

Tayo realizes that all stories — ancient, wartime, and personal — fit together into one continuous living story.

The novel closes with an extended ceremonial verse prayer as Tayo offers his completed story up to the sunrise.

Tayo's healing is driven not just by action but by a series of internal revelations that fundamentally shift his understanding of himself and the world. From his earliest guilt — believing a curse he spoke over the jungle caused the reservation's drought — to Betonie's world-altering teaching that witchery, not white people alone, is the root of all destruction, Tayo gradually rebuilds his worldview from the ground up. Key discoveries along the way, including the constellation visible from Ts'eh's window and the ceremonial pattern hidden in the walls of a uranium mine, confirm that Tayo's personal story is woven into an ancient and ongoing cosmic narrative. His choice to abstain from killing Emo — made in the very moment when violence would be easiest — is the spiritual turning point of his entire ceremony. The novel closes with a ceremonial prayer, confirming that Tayo's healing is complete and that his story, like all stories, will continue to grow.