"Powerful. . . impressive. . . [an] epic of the 1840s frontier." --Dallas Morning News

With soaring and masterful prose, James Carlos Blake brings to life an enthralling historical time and place--and a cast of memorable characters--in a stunning tale of dark instinct, blood reckoning, and fates forged in the zeal of America's "Manifest Destiny."

The offspring of a mother of ill repute and a homicidal father, Edward and John Little are driven from their home in the Florida swamplands by a scheming parent's treacheries, and by a shameful, horrific act that will haunt their dreams for the rest of their days. Joining the swelling ranks of the rootless--wandering across an almost surreal bloodland populated by the sorrowfully lost and defiantly damned--two brothers are separated by death and circumstance in the lawless "Dixie City" of New Orleans, and dispatched by destiny to opposing sides in a fierce and desperate territorial struggled between Mexico and the United States. And a family bond tempered in hot blood is tested in the cruel, all-consuming fires of war and conscience.