Dr. Colby Phillips, a professor of anthropology and archeology, sets out with his grandson Jimmy to dig in South Dakota Indian graves, searching for the Thomas Jefferson Peace Medal, the Holy Grail of artifact collecting. They quickly learn they are in a race with bandits and bureaucrats, a river is rising, and the whole enterprise may be damned, but with new friends and a revised sense of his own strength, Dr. Phillips stands up to everything that is in his way-including his own desires.