The Home Wind is a middle-grade children's novel, which takes place during the early 1870s in an Upper Michigan logging camp. Jamie Kangas struggles with turbulent emotions caused by the death of his father, who perished in a logging accident--an accident for which Jamie blames himself. Jamie's widowed mother must raise her son in the Fox River logging camp set deep in the wilderness of Upper Michigan. While his mother works as camp cook, Jamie is run ragged as chore boy for the lumberjacks in a world that offers only endless work and loneliness. The grinding dreariness fades when Jamie meets a Native America boy, Gray Feather. A friendship grows and Gray Feather becomes Jamie's mentor as the two face the challenges of a harsh environment and prejudiced world. But Gray Feather carries a burden of his own, which may destroy him. And as one tree after another fall with the sawyer's blade, Jamie hears the ghostly words of his deceased father warning of future catastrophe.