Mitch Caddo started out with the best of intentions--after his mother's sudden death in a car crash, he finished law school and returned to Passage Rouge, the reservation where she grew up. Though an outsider to the tribe himself, he sought to help his new community by representing disadvantaged families in tribal court. But that was before--before he got sucked into the world of Mack Plum, his charismatic childhood friend. Before Mack ran and won the race for Tribal President as an underdog populist. Before he and Mitch became the people who would do anything to keep Mack at the head of the tribal council. And before he came face to face once again with his teenage flame Layla Plum, none other than Mack's sister, who had returned to Passage Rouge for her own reasons.

Now on the eve of Passage Rouge's next tribal election, Mitch finds himself torn between two rivals: he's unsettled by Mack's abuses of power and his own complicity in them, but he doesn't quite trust Gloria Hawkins, Mack's opponent--a nationally known activist and politician who has Layla running her campaign. When an accident claims the life of a central figure in the reservation's complicated political landscape, the election descends into chaos, and Mitch and Layla find themselves trying to stop the tribe's slide towards all-out violence while doing their best to correct the wrongs of the past.

Big Chief tells a story about the search for belonging, not just as an individual, but as a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.