After her mother dies suddenly, seventeen-year-old Erin is virtually alone in the world. Her reserved father doesn't know how to relate to his only daughter now that his wife is gone. When Erin accompanies him to his construction site on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, she witnesses something that changes everything. Charlie White Bird, one of her father's workers, discovers the 127-year-old remains of a young Cheyenne girl, wrapped in a faded blue army coat; on each finger of her right hand is a silver thimble. Moehae, as Erin and Charlie come to name her, captures their imagination, and together they secretly try to protect her burial ground. As their commitment to their cause becomes more passionate, so, too, does their relationship, which they must also keep secret. When Erin discovers she's pregnant, she feels she has no other choice but to run away. With her mother's old suitcase and her granddad's journals on the Indian wars, she sets out, and as she moves farther from home, Moehae's story vividly unfolds in her mind, guiding her toward another way out of her predicament. Evocative and sweeping in scope, "Useful Girl" is at once a love story, a young woman's heroic quest, and a moving testament to the power of the imagination.