The year is 1910. Nate Cooper is an old-school cowboy who has spent nearly thirty years in a Montana prison of a wrongful life sentence for a false murder conviction. Nate's moral compass is true and unwavering: he does all the wrong things for all the right reasons. Upon his release he learns that the turn of the century has brought great change--none of it good. Horses are being replaced by the motorcar, his girlfriend has long ago married his best friend, his nemesis is running for Governor, and the Blackfoot Indians (the people he went to prison trying to defend) are still being betrayed by ranchers. So some things haven't changed. Nate is one of them. He returns to his Northern Montana ranching town a free man and stirs up the pot of controversy immediately--seeking justice, evading hired guns, brawling in saloons, righting past wrongs, and ferreting out--with the help of a young newspaper reporter and the woman he used to love--a fraudulent boundary adjustment robbing the Blackfoot (again) of their territory.

Along the way, he ruffles feathers all the way to the State House, and before the storm he brings is over, he and the friends of his youth will all pay a shockingly high price for justice.