Abandoned by her parents and left to deal with her aging and senile grandfather, Annika faces poverty, isolation, and sexual oppression. When Mark, a wealthy, married stranger on his way to a sailing competition visits her bleak lakeside town during the dead of winter, a quiet but intense entanglement develops. Opened and transformed as a result of the affair, Annika faces possibilities normally unavailable to a person of her class, but Mark gradually falls into a forlorn, cold solitude.

The truth of the past come to light in a series of haunting visions in this drama. The strange visions grow more vivid with each passing day, a young woman of Native American heritage begins piecing together a Catholic priests diabolical plot to prevent her mother from revealing the atrocities that unfolded at a Native Indian boarding school.

This award-winning drama depicts The Gangster Era in St Paul in the 1920s & 30s. John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly and most notably, Ma Barker's Barker-Karpis Gang and many others were given safe haven by corrupt cops in exchange for their promise to not commit any crimes inside the city limits of St Paul.