In the summer of 1855, Sarah Brinton abandons her husband and child to make the long and difficult journey to Minnesota, where she will meet a childhood friend. Arriving at a small frontier post on the edge of the prairie, she discovers that her friend has died of cholera. Without work, money or friends, Sarah anticipates unease and hardship, but instead finds acceptance and kinship with the Sioux women who live on the nearby reservation. She learns to speak their language, nourishing a companionship with them that far exceeds that which she shares with her strange, distant new husband. An endless flow of white settlers are clearing the forests and claiming land. The government has yet to pay the Sioux the annuities awarded them for the sale of the land, and starvation and disease begin to decimate the Sioux community. What inevitably and tragically follows is the Sioux Uprising of 1862. While seeking safety at a nearby fort, Sarah and her two young children are abducted by Sioux warriors.

They are unexpectedly kept safe by one of the men, who protects them until their rescue six weeks later by federal troops. Because of her sympathy for the Sioux, Sarah has become an outcast, falsely accused of marriage with her Native American captor. Vilified by the whites and despised by her husband, she is lost to both worlds. Intimate, raw, compelling, and brilliantly subversive, THE LOST WIFE explores the history of Native American suffering and the rapacious settlement of the Western frontier.