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A fiction book written of an actual historical event with real characters, Love to Water My Soul by Jane Kirkpatrick is a spell-binding story which involves the life of a very young white child rescued by the Wadduka tribe, Oregon's Paiute people, after she falls off the traveling wagon train without notice around 1866. The female child Asiam is the author Jane Kirkpatrick's mother-in-law's actual great-grandmother, who was rescued and lived most of her life among the Indian tribe until running away for her safety.

Living a life as a cast-off in the tribe, Asiam learns to live her early years with the tribe's dogs for survival, sleeping with them at night for warmth and forced to eat scraps of food they could find together. Feeling she could trust dogs more than people, she develops a relationship with them that is more than kin as most of the tribe members refused to acknowledge she was there due to the color of her skin. She falls from a high mountain only to have her leg severely broken, laying on the ground to receive her death as she feels she is worthy of nothing more. The medicine man of the tribe accidentally finds her and brings her back to the tribe, giving his knife to anyone who will adopt her. Nobody wants to care for her as she is no good to them unless she can carry wood or cook. With a broken leg, she is considered even more worthless than before.

Eventually she is adopted by an extremely tall Indian woman by the name of Lukwsh, a woman from another tribe who had married into the Wadduka tribe and remained there after her husband's death. The first time Asiam has ever received any acts of kindness or love in the tribe is when she moves to the tent of Lukwsh and her family for care of her leg and to prevent a slow starvation. Eventually in her heart and soul, she finally thinks she finds happiness when Lukwsh becomes her loving mother--along with Lukwsh's children --and is treated like one of the family, even though members of the Wadduka tribe do not like her. Unfortunately, over many years she falls in love with the eldest boy, Shard, with both planning on marrying and forming a life together, against the tribe's wishes.

Developing a life as a natural healer with natural power and voices which speak to her, the medicine man of the tribe not only fears her but attempts to drive her out of the tribe due to her white skin being bad luck where in actuality she is a threat to him. Forced to flee out of safety for her life, both her mother, Lukwsh, and Shard tellsher to leave the village to prevent her from being burnt alive at the stake for evil doings, which were deceivingly set-up by the medicine man. Spending weeks in the forest and traveling over the mountains, she eventually finds her way to safety with a white woman by the name of Jane Herbert Sherar, a good woman who helps Asiam find her true self as both a white and Indian woman.

"When I turned back, I saw a glass next to the bed like one in Wuzzie's lodge (the medicine man). In it reflected my image. I jumped back, startled by the thin cheeks, eyes like rocks sunk into months-old snow, tangled strands, missing places and mats of hair, dirt all around my mouth, cracked lips, as dark and as thick as my eyebrows. Even my nabawici (physical markings given to her as an infant to show she was "a lost child" or not belonging to the tribe) lay hidden beneath the dirt. Sores oozed from the side of my nose. One eye appeared swollen and draining, the other held an empty, vacant look, though it could have been caused by the ripples that moved in the glass."