An unseen Watcher lives in the land of the Kepke. He resides in the inner forest -- the Forest of Thought and Creation. He was sent by the Great Everywhere Father to observe and judge the Kepke people. Every Kepke man is warned not to venture too far away from the outer forest, for he might come upon the Watcher and die a terrible fearful death. Yet someday there will be a Kepke man who will possess great medicine. He will venture into the inner forest. The Watcher will seek him out and the lives of the Kepke will be changed forever. But the legends never say exactly how this will happen, or what the change will be. To find the answer, Running Brook must leave the land of the Kepke on a quest that will take him into the mystical Forest and deep within himself. (This new edition also contains the full sequel, "Redemption")

Every year, right before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, there is a cultural war in certain Jewish neighborhoods over a ceremony called Kapporos, in which a chicken is slaughtered just before the holy day. The animal rights people show up claiming, "Meat is murder!" while the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who practice this ceremony accuse the activists of antisemitism and violating their freedom of religion. Epithets fly and confrontations occur across the barricades, but nobody is really listening to each other. Rabbi Gershom seeks to build a bridge of understanding between these two warring camps. On the one hand, he opposes using live chickens as Kapporos, and, like many other religious Jews before him, advocates giving money to charity instead. But on the other hand, he is himself a Hasid who understands and believes in the kabbalistic principle of "raising holy sparks" so central to the ceremony. In fact, he says, it is that very mysticism that has led him not to use chickens for the ritual.