Mother Nature struggles to maintain equilibrium in a changing world while fire, disease, logging, human displacement, and war destroy one forest of centuries-old trees after another. Split Toe, a legendary deer chosen at birth for an extraordinary education, travels through time on a sweeping adventure as he learns about the inner workings of Michigan’s forest and begins to understand the place of humans in the natural world. Along the way, he meets: Ice Age hunters who trap a mastodon; a young Ojibwe hunter who stalks Split Toe through swamp and forest; loggers clearcutting Michigan’s white pines; a forest woman advocating for the trees; early pioneers who become a first generation of family farmers; scientists from the future studying the impact of nuclear radiation. Split Toe sees two hundred years of conflict building between humans who fight to control the natural world and Mother Nature, who repeatedly reaches for balance. Split Toe wonders whether human ways will overtake Mother Nature until he meets a boy who changes everything.