The author is from the Lakota tribe and grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. His maternal grandparents raised him, and many of his stories feature them and the lessons they taught him. His grandparents practiced the traditional way of life, and they taught him lessons through patience. For example, his grandmother asked him to help her bead during a windstorm to help comfort him, and his grandfather allowed him to participate in the construction of a log house. He also writes about his father, Joseph Marshall II, who fought during World War II on Okinawa. His father later was able to recover from alcoholism. Marshall is a writer whose stories are intended to transmit and preserve Lakota culture. He writes about traditional Lakota lore, as well as about the history of the Lakota people battling white encroachment and fighting to retain their culture.

Iktomi is the trickster figure in Lakota lore. In one story, he treats the ducks into dancing with their eyes closed as he begins to club them and eat them. He is symbolic to the writer of the way in which the Lakota have often fallen for illusions, such as the Fort Laramie Treaty, which granted whites the right of passage through the Lakota’s land if the whites would not take away their land.