When Gaylord Riley walked away from the Coburn gang, he had money and a dream. He worked hard and built a cabin, gathered a herd of cattle, and fell in love with Marie Shattuck. But when he is confronted with false accusations of rustling and murder, Riley is forced to defend his new law-abiding way of life. Outnumbered and facing a lynching party, Riley is surprised when his old friends return to lend him a hand. But how can they help him and keep themselves out of jail?

They came by river and by wagon train, braving the endless distances of the Great Plains and the icy passes of the Sierra Nevada. They were men like Linus Rawlings, a restless survivor of Indian country who’d headed east to see the ocean but left his heart - and his home - in the West. They were women like Lilith Prescott, a smart, spirited beauty who fled her family and fell for a gambling man in the midst of a frontier gold boom. These pioneering men and women sowed the seeds of a nation with their courage....

Barnabus Pike is no gunfighter and not much of a street fighter. Eddie Holt is a black boxer in a white man's world. They've both taken their share of hard knocks. Now they're looking to survive a brutal winter in a remote Montana line shack, collect their pay, and settle down for good. Then they cross paths with a hardworking Irish immigrant and his beautiful, spirited sister, who've been burned off their land. It's a fight Pike and Holt don't want, don't need, and don't dare turn their backs on - especially when one of the perpetrators might be one of Pike's old friends.

A woman ahead of her time, Mary Breydon knew how to get things done. Raised on a Virginia plantation, she learned how to care for livestock, respect her workers, and keep good books. But after her husband is killed, Mary must provide for her young daughter by running a stage coach station on the Cherokee Trail. With the help of an Irish maid and a mysterious stranger, Mary faces challenges that even the men eagerly anticipating her failure would have a difficult time overcoming.

Ninety years ago the Toomey brothers, along with 25 other men and 4,000 head of cattle, vanished en route to Arizona. When writer and historian Dan Sheridan is invited to the missing brothers’ ranch by its current owner, he jumps at the chance. The visit fits right in with his plan to solve the century-old mystery - but it turns out that his host isn’t a fan of books, writers, or people who don’t mind their own business.