In the midst of Reconstruction, pioneering homesteader, livestock breeder, and would-be innkeeper Hamish "Cashdown" Musgrave brings his sprawling family into the Palouse Prairie. Before they succeed, they face claim-jumpers and bandits; floods, fires, and blizzards; and diseases, locusts, and crop losses. But soon Hamish's brother Callum goes missing and remains mysteriously elusive. The railroad refuses to build a line past the Musgrave stagecoach...