Danae offers Tookie lottery money to transport her dead former lover Budgie's body using a stolen refrigerated grocery truck.

Tookie retrieves Budgie's body at the Wisconsin-Minnesota border and cashes Danae's check, unaware that drugs are hidden on the corpse.

Pollux, a tribal police officer who spotted Tookie with the truck, arrests her at a steakhouse bar.

Tookie is sentenced to 60 years in prison after Danae and Mara make false statements and her defense collapses.

Reservation lawyer Ted Johnson wins repeated appeals until Tookie's sentence is commuted and she is released after seven years.

Former teacher Jackie helps Tookie secure a job at Birchbark Books, an independent Indigenous-focused bookstore in Minneapolis.

Tookie accepts Pollux's surprise marriage proposal and begins building a stable home life after her release from prison.

Flora, a devoted but irritating bookstore customer who claimed Indigenous ancestry, dies, and her ghost begins haunting Birchbark Books.

Flora's foster daughter Kateri gives Tookie the book Flora was reading when she died, an old manuscript titled The Sentence.

Tookie suffers a near-fatal out-of-body experience reading the dangerous page in The Sentence and buries the indestructible book in her yard.

COVID-19 arrives and Birchbark Books is designated an essential business, forcing employees to work solo shifts in the store.

George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police, and the city erupts in protests and riots that force a reckoning with racism.

Pollux contracts COVID-19 and is hospitalized for weeks while Tookie camps in the hospital parking lot waiting for news.

Asema reveals that The Sentence exposes Flora's ancestor as the white woman who enslaved and trafficked Tookie's ancestor Maaname.

Tookie learns her true name is Lily, forgives Flora for her ancestor's crimes, and Flora's ghost peacefully leaves the bookstore.

The Sentence traces Tookie's life from a reckless crime through incarceration to an unexpected second chance. Tookie steals a dead body as a favor for a crush, unknowingly transporting drugs in the process, and is sentenced to 60 years in prison before being freed after seven years. After prison, she builds a new life at Birchbark Books and marries Pollux, the officer who arrested her. A mysterious haunting by the ghost of a bookstore customer named Flora, combined with a deadly manuscript also called The Sentence, forces Tookie to confront her buried past. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd's murder further destabilize her world, while Pollux's dangerous illness brings her resentments and love into sharp focus. The haunting finally resolves when Tookie uncovers a shocking ancestral connection between herself and Flora, learns her own true name, and forgives Flora, freeing her ghost at last.

The core arc of Tookie's crime, incarceration, redemption, and haunting.

Tookie survives a year of solitary prison isolation without books by mentally revisiting beloved stories from her past.

Ted Johnson, the reservation lawyer who secured Tookie's release through years of appeals, dies of a heart attack.

Tookie and the Birchbark Books employees burn sage to spiritually cleanse the store, and a book flings off a shelf.

Kateri calls Tookie to report that Flora's body never arrived at the crematorium and that no autopsy was ever performed.

Pollux's niece Hetta returns home unexpectedly with a newborn baby boy named Jarvis, surprising both Tookie and Pollux.

The Birchbark Books employees celebrate New Year's at Louise's house, debating wild rice varieties and sharing personal histories.

During a bookstore inventory, Tookie connects a strange self-published cowbird book to its author Laurent, Hetta's likely secret partner.

Tookie accompanies Kateri to Flora's cremation, then despairs when Flora's ghost returns to the bookstore only five days later.

Flora's ghost plays 'Ain't No Grave' by Johnny Cash over the bookstore speakers on a playlist Tookie never made.

Hetta attends George Floyd protests alongside Asema, and their shared activism begins healing Hetta and Tookie's strained relationship.

Hetta is struck by police tear gas at the Third Precinct protest and is rescued by Laurent in the crowd.

Tookie and her family watch Minneapolis burning on television and argue over whether the police force should be abolished.

Laurent tells Tookie and her family his rugaroo origin story, claiming immortal wolf ancestry and that he was born in a coffin.

Tookie and Pollux repair their relationship through quiet dates to the Pow Wow Grounds for frybread while Pollux recovers.

Tookie votes for the first time on Election Day after Pollux is finally released from the hospital.

This pool follows the significant secondary moments in Tookie's journey, beginning with her survival of solitary prison isolation and the death of the lawyer who saved her. Back in the world, Tookie navigates the bookstore's spiritual rituals, a disturbing morgue mix-up about Flora's body, and the surprise arrival of Hetta with a newborn baby. The New Year's celebration and an inventory discovery deepen her relationships with colleagues while Flora's cremation fails to stop the haunting. The violence surrounding George Floyd's murder reshapes the family as Hetta is drawn into protests and Laurent steps up as an unexpected hero. Back at home, Tookie and Pollux slowly repair their bond through quiet rituals together, even as Laurent's fantastical rugaroo story adds new mystery to the family's future. The pool closes with Tookie casting a ballot for the very first time, a small but meaningful act of self-reclamation.

The quieter but vital moments shaping Tookie's world at home and in the bookstore.

Tookie accidentally ruins her own defense by correctly guessing the rainbow color of the duct tape hiding drugs on Budgie's body.

Tookie has a panic attack during a prison transfer, attempts to suffocate herself, and is placed in isolation for a year.

Tookie deciphers enough of The Sentence to read that the imprisoned Indigenous woman was being sentenced to whiteness by her captors.

Tookie attempts to burn The Sentence in her fireplace and chop it with a hatchet, but the book survives both attacks.

An unseasonably warm autumn finally gives way to the first snowfall, offering Tookie temporary peace after burying the book.

Tookie finds a strange note printed on a manual typewriter lodged in the bookstore cash register, warning of something at the door.

Pen admits to Tookie that she too can hear Flora's ghost and confesses she wrote the mysterious note as if it were dictated.

Pollux reveals he believes in spirits and explains the Ojibwe practice of adding '-iban' to a deceased person's name.

Hetta apologizes to Tookie in spring and confesses to having taken a role in a pornographic film called Midnight Cowgirl.

Tookie tells Hetta that Pollux was the tribal police officer who originally arrested her for stealing Budgie's body.

Asema reveals she secretly dug up The Sentence from Tookie's backyard and read the dangerous sentence herself without dying.

Flora's ghost pushes Tookie to the floor in the bookstore and unsuccessfully attempts to possess her body, leaving mysterious marks on her back.

Camping alone in the hospital parking lot, Tookie confronts and resolves her long-held resentment toward Pollux for arresting her.

Pen devises a forgiveness ritual and the bookstore employees guide Flora's ghost into the confessional booth to attempt to free her spirit.

The white woman who bragged about her ancestors' treatment of Indigenous people drops a box of Indigenous bones at Birchbark Books.

This pool tracks the hidden turning points and emotional revelations that drive Tookie's inner transformation throughout the novel. Her self-destruction during her trial and her year of prison isolation establish how deeply trauma lives in her body, while her early encounters with The Sentence reveal its terrifying power. The indestructible book and the escalating mystery of Flora's presence deepen as strange clues appear in the form of typewriter notes and increasingly aggressive ghostly behavior. Pen's confirmation of the haunting breaks Tookie's sense of isolation, and Pollux's spiritual wisdom about the dead offers her unexpected comfort. The crisis comes to a head when Flora tries to possess Tookie's body and Pollux's COVID hospitalization forces Tookie to finally choose love over long-held resentment. In the closing resolution, the employees devise a ritual to free Flora's ghost and a box of stolen Indigenous bones is returned for proper burial, completing the novel's cycle of reckoning and repair.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that drive Tookie's inner transformation.