A senior Canadian diplomat is viciously assaulted in his hotel room in South Africa. His world collapses in post-traumatic shock and he is haunted by flashback images of the discrimination he and his family endured when they moved to a small community in central Ontario immediately following World War Two. To exorcise these ghosts, he returns to the past to relive his childhood and youth. In the ensuing memoir, Jim Bartleman contrasts the universal existential conditions he faced as a child (discrimination, poverty, suicide, religious quest) with what he experienced as a diplomat serving in five continents over 35 years. In the process, he discovered that to feel whole, he had to feel accepted by the two worlds of his ancestry: Native and white. In early 2002, James Bartleman was named Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.