In the process of weaving her first Chief's Blanket, Flower After the Rain discovers the meaning of giving and receiving.

When a young girl attends the wedding of her best friend's cousin, she learns many things about the customs of the Navajo Indians living in the American Southwest.

Describes each month of a year in the life of an eleven-year-old Navajo girl, Alice Yazzie, from January, Yas Nilt'ees, to December, Nilch'itsoh.

"Yossel, along with his family, flees anti-Jewish Russian pogroms in the late nineteenth century and settles in the American Southwest where he forges a friendship with Thomas, a Native American Navajo boy"--

In September 1944 eleven-year-old Billie lives with her great aunt, Doff, eagerly waiting for her older brother Leo to return from boot camp, and desperate to find the father that left when she was little; but Leo brings a friend with him, a Navajo named Denny, and the injured dog they have rescued and named Bear--and when the two young men go off to war Bear becomes the thread that ties them all together, and helps Billie to find a true friend.