Eleven-year-old Jimmy is angry, lonely, and homesick. Since Mother moved them from the pueblo where they lived at one with the land, to Grandfather Whitefeather's house in the city after Father's death, Jimmy has been hemmed in by tall buildings, concrete, noisy neighbors, and unfriendly people. The worst part is that there doesn't seem to be a good reason for being here.

"Try to carry the pueblo with you everywhere you go," Grandfather advises. He explains strange things like automatic doors and keeping safe at night, and helps Jimmy find good things like ice cream and the smell of a freshly cut lawn. But Jimmy doesn't understand—or really want to know—how Grandfather can live here, or why Mother thinks it important for Jimmy to live here too. Why should he learn about the world outside the pueblo, when he's sure it will never be home?

In sensitive and eloquent language, Craig Kee Strete captures the desert's beauty and the city's bustling chaos, Jimmy's struggle to live in both worlds, and the hope he finds in Grandfather Whitefeather's gentle wisdom, Mother's courage, and the dreams that sustain them all.

"When you know too much about life as Indians live it, the sadness is somehow always there," says Craig Strete. But there is still what he calls "the heart and soul" of The World In Grandfather's Hands: "Hope which gives courage to look at the night and see things. And the power of dreams which brings day from night."