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The novel begins with Alex Kaminsky, a fourteen-year-old Ukrainian boy, fleeing a fire that consumes the farmhouse where he has been living with his uncle, He has been unable to save his drunken uncle and parts of his face and hands are burned. A neighbor farmer comes to his rescue and he is hurried by sleigh to a district midwife/nurse, Mrs. Eddy, who tends to him. Mrs. Eddy’s seven-year-old daughter, Myrt, takes a shine to Alex but the older daughter, Liz, is upset that a “Hun” is staying in her beloved brother’s bedroom while he is away fighting with the British forces in Europe.
Alex stays with the Eddys until Christmas when a telegram arrives that Robin Eddy has been killed overseas. Liz is beside herself with fury and grief—her hatred of Alex even more apparent. A Christmas guest of the Eddys, Mr. Bayles—a postmaster and storekeeper in the tiny hamlet of Bayles Corner, takes Alex home with him and gets him back into the school Alex had been attending.
But Alex is totally preoccupied with worry about his older brother, Marco, who had been working as a farmhand near Vegreville, and was expected home before Christmas. Marco, a talented artist and woodworker, has spent extra weeks beyond the fall harvest at a Vegreville farm where he has been working on building and furniture repairs. There has been no word from him since earlier in November. Alex is determined to make the trip from Bayles Corner to Vegreville to see if he can find Marco or at least get some information about what has happened to him. Mr. Bayles gives him money for the train tickets he will need and Alex, reaching Vegreville, walks out to the farm. There he discovers that Marco, being deprived of much of his wages, got into a fight with Granger, a middle-aged, belligerent farmer, and was arrested by the police in Vegreville. Granger’s wife, Stella, has Alex come up to Marco’s attic bedroom and gives him a package with a few of the things Marco left behind. When Alex gets back to Vegreville and is about to take the train home, he discovers that Granger has stolen his money from his coat pocket.
At a loss for what to do, he leaves the train station but hasn’t gone far when he encounters Ivan, an itinerant worker, also Ukrainian, who has no papers and has been doing what he can to avoid the law. Ivan suggests that Marco has probably been taken to Edmonton. It might be possible to check with the mounties there. He plans to hop a freight car himself and get to the city and invites Alex along. The only car they manage to get into, though, is an open coal hopper. When they get to Edmonton, station guards give chase and Alex escapes into a nearby alley where he burrows into a pile of sawdust behind a warehouse.
Alex manages to fall asleep, covering himself up with sawdust to keep warm. In the morning he is found by a worker, Karl Arneson, a carpenter at a furniture shop. Hearing Alex’s story, Karl decides to give him a home—at least for a while. Maria, his wife, is less welcoming—worried about another mouth to feed in their burgeoning family—but,with time, she becomes more accepting. Karl offers to go to the police station to see what he can find out, and Alex begins attending the school the Arneson boys go to, assuming the identity of a Norwegian relative. His grade six teacher, Mr. Dallaine, befriends him and, quickly figuring out his background is not Norwegian, says his secret is safe with him. Karl finds out from the police that Marco has been sent to an internment centre in Lethbridge but a letter finally reaches Alex, forwarded by Mr. Bayles, in which Marco indicates that he has been taken with other prisoners to the internment compound at the Cave and Basin in Banff. It turns out that Ivan is there too, having failed to escape the police in Edmonton. They have become part of the forced labour parties building roads and bridges in the park, living in wretched conditions, suffering because of the extreme cold and inadequate clothing.
Although Alex is older than the children in his class, he is befriended by Eric Richards, the son of a well-heeled family. Eric invites him home to dinner after seeing a Saturday movie matinee. Mr. Richards, with a barrage of questions, determines that Alex is actually Ukrainian and reports the boy’s duplicity to the principal of the school. Alex is expelled. The Arnesons are fearful that authorities may follow up and are relieved when Mr. Dallaine shows up at their home in the evening and offers to keep Alex at his apartment and then, when the school week is over, take him down to Calgary to stay with an aunt who raised him.
Aunt Mattie, who was a teacher in her younger days and now pursues an interest in landscape painting, is happy to have Alex stay with her and continue with his schooling. Alex is able to keep in touch with Marco through letters but, when the letters stop coming, he becomes frantic with worry. Aunt Mattie has a cottage in Banff which she uses in the summer but she offers to take Alex there for a winter visit where it should be easier for them to find out what has happened to Marco. They are not allowed near the internment compound but Alex watches closely the parties of prisoners walking to and from work. He doesn’t see Marco but he and Ivan spot one another.
The next day Ivan drops a note in the snow indicating that Marco, after an altercation with a guard, has been in the hoosegaw for three weeks and has just been released but is very sick. Fearful that his friend might die if they don’t escape, Ivan manages to get Marco to appear well enough to resume work with his work party. Alex sends his brother a coded letter describing Aunt Mattie’s house and its location in Banff. In the midst of dynamiting to clear rocks for a road bed, Ivan and Marco run into the forest nearby. Word of the escape quickly reaches the townspeople and Alex keeps vigil.
It is after midnight when Marco scratches at Alex’s bedroom window. Quickly getting him inside the cottage, Alex is horrified at how thin his once robust brother has become and is alarmed over his constant coughing. He is nurtured for a few days at the cottage but Aunt Mattie is expert at getting him into some traveling clothes and they head home to Calgary on the train. Ivan, unlucky again at escaping, is caught and thrown into the hoosegaw. In Calgary, Aunt Mattie’s doctor examines Marco and discovers he is in an advanced stage of tuberculosis.
Earlier, Alex was surprised to receive a letter from Stella, the farmer’s young wife, indicating that she has left Granger after being severely beaten and is trying to get in touch with Marco. In her letter she enclosed one for Marco which Alex now gives him and Marco admits that a pregnant Stella is likely carrying his baby. Mr. Dallaine and Aunt Hattie help Stella get away from Vegreville and join Marco in Calgary. She and Marco have a few months together and their baby is born before Marco dies. In a conversation before Marco dies, Alex promises to be the best of uncles to young Stephan Marco. Down for the funeral, Mr. Dallaine spends time with Alex and encourages him, rather than trying to return to his uncle’s farm, to pursue a goal of becoming a teacher.
The firebird, a recurring figure in Russian/Polish/Ukrainian folklore, is a symbol of magic powers and regeneration. Marco’s and Alex’s mother, at one time a nurse to a rich Polish family, has read them the stories. It is a motif that Marco loves to paint and, of course, that Alex, surviving a deadly fire, embodies—as it does the power of his determination to build a successful life in this new land his family worked so hard to get him to.