Winter in the Blood is a hauntingly beautiful film that is true to the lyrical and unflinching spirit of James Welch's classic 1974 novel of Native American life. Virgil First Raise wakes in a ditch on the hardscrabble plains of Montana. He stumbles home to his ranch on the reservation only to learn that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she's stolen his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to find her, beginning an odyssey of inebriated intrigues.