This is a coming-of-age story set in Western Kansas at the close of the Civil War, a story of the year between when Will McRae's family was killed by the Kiowa and his seventeenth birthday; a tale of fighting Indians and outlaws, of rescuing a family of freed slaves in a winter blizzard, of making a winter cattle drive from Western Kansas to Denver City, and of falling in love, but mostly it is a story of a rapid and harsh transition into manhood...