Birds carry a message for Claire that she doesn't understand. Eleven-year-old Claire doesn’t tell anyone of her uncanny power to attract birds. She is a devoted birder, home schooled in the woods of central Pennsylvania, who discovers she’s part of a local legend, one involving a Red-tailed Hawk. The hawk saved her as a toddler; now it’s her turn to save the hawk. Claire and her mother Louise live in a densely forested region of North Central Pennsylvania where her mother is about to open a small rural grocery store. While drifting through the woodland with her sheepdog, Claire encounters a local Red-tailed Hawk known as Big Red and a crusty old man (with a pet chicken), who tells her amazing stories about the female hawk. Like herself, Jerry is an oddball with an affinity for birds. But as Claire develops a cautious friendship with this mysterious and erratic elder, her new friendship with Victor falters. He is best friends with her foe, Billy, a bully in the seventh grade. And Billy's father is a drunkard obsessed with killing Big Red. Claire works to defend the raptor, whose life increasingly entwines with her own, while dodging Billy's mean-spirited plots against her. Finally, Victor comes to Claire's aid. And together they work to solve the strange mystery of her ability to attract birds, a mystery including the wizardly old man and a mystical hawk to whom they give the name Ku-Khain.