Out in the wilds, an aged man tells his grandchildren a tale of his own youth. After his mother dies, his usually-absent father, whom he barely knows, takes him into these same wilds to hunt for a grizzly. They find a mother bear with two cubs. The hunters capture the cubs, but the grizzly captures the lad. Somehow, boy and bear bond and trek across the forest with dad and an Indian friend on their trail. After a while, the boy figures out where he and his new mother are going: toward her cubs. Rifles, dogs, hunters, bear, cubs, father, and son are headed for a rendezvous.

In 1998, three white men in the small town of Jasper, Texas, chained a black man to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him to his death...