North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence - but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with...

This is a story of pioneers, pirates and ponies, floods, earthquakes, a mysterious wilderness settlement and how the second generation of a Cherokee family found a home on the upper reaches of the Little Red River. Barely sixteen, Ruth Harris is captured with her brother Jerry and held prisoner on Pirate Island. With help from the New Madrid earthquakes, they flee through trackless wilderness and Jerry comes of age during their sojourn at Flee's Settlement....

"At the mountain's base sits a cabin under an old hickory tree. And in that cabin lives a family -- loving, weaving, cooking, and singing. The strength in their song sustains them through trials on the ground and in the sky, as they wait for their loved one, a pilot, to return from war."--Amazon.