Phil Sundeen thinks Deputy Sheriff Kirby Frye is just a green local kid with a tin badge. And when the wealthy cattle baron's men drag two prisoners from Frye's jail and hang them from a high tree, there's nothing the young lawman can do about it. But Kirby's got more grit than Sundeen and his hired muscle bargained for. They can beat the boy and humiliate him, but they can't make him forget the oath he has sworn to uphold. The cattleman has money, power, and guns on his side, but Kirby Frye is the law in this corner of the Arizona Territories, and he'll drive a rich man to his knees to prove it.

David Flynn is a legend in the rugged Arizona Territory--a U.S. cavalry turned army scout and the only man alive who can bring in the fierce Apache renegade Soldado Viejo. Tracking an elusive Indian with a price on his head south of the border is dangerous business. And when a cunning outlaw and a murderous bounty hunter dog his path, Flynn gets on a bloody trail of treachery and slaughter in a lawless land where a man has to watch his back against friend and enemy alike. On the deadliest mission of his career, in a sultry desert hell where the hunter becomes the hunted, Flynn's struggle for justice has just turned into the battle of his lifetime.

Set in a logging town on the lawless Pacific coast of Washington State at the turn of the twentieth century, a spellbinding novel of fate and redemption--told with a muscular lyricism and filled with a cast of characters Shakespearean in scope--in which the lives of an ill-fated family are at the mercy of violent social and historical forces that tear them apart.

Keen to make his fortune, Jacob Ellstrom, armed with his medical kit and new wife, Nell, lands in The Harbor--a mud-filled, raucous coastal town teeming with rough trade pioneers, sawmill laborers, sailors, and prostitutes. But Jacob is not a doctor, and a botched delivery exposes his ruse, driving him onto the streets in a plunge towards alcoholism. Alone, Nell scrambles to keep herself and their young son, Duncan, safe in this dangerous world. When a tentative reunion between the couple--in the company of Duncan and Jacob's malicious brother, Matius--results in tragedy, Jacob must flee town to elude being charged with murder.

Years later, the wild and reckless Duncan seems to be yet another of The Harbor's hoodlums. His only salvation is his overwhelming love for Teresa Boyerton, the daughter of the town's largest mill owner. But disaster will befall the lovers with heartbreaking consequences.

And across town, Bellhouse, a union boss and criminal rabble-rouser, sits at the helm of The Harbor's seedy underbelly, perpetuating a cycle of greed and violence. His thug Tartan directs his pack of thieves, pimps, and murderers, and conceals an incendiary secret involving Duncan's mother. As time passes, a string of calamitous events sends these characters hurtling towards each other in an epic collision that will shake the town to its core.