Eighteen-year-old Tyrel Sackett must flee his home in Tennessee because he killed a man who was trying to kill his brother, Orrin, who catches up with him, and so begins their travels west, to New Mexico Territory, where “Spanish land grants are being voided by fraud”.

In Mora, Orrin and Tyrel start a ranch and bring their mother to live with them in their new home.

Literary scholar Harold Hinds Jr. writes that, “His heroes are independent and courageous, awkward with women, gifted fighting men, personifications of good.

To create a sense of authenticity, considerable attention is paid to folklore, local color, and regionalism.” (130).

His novels are remarkable for their authentic settings and attention to historical detail”[4] Bruce Weber writes for L'Amour's New York Times obituary, "L’Amour’s prose does not, of course, rival Proust's, nor do his characters show too much complexity; the good guys and the bad guys are pretty clear from the beginning.