In this new trio of short novels, "The Phantom Herds of Furnace Flats" opens to a mysterious murder in the Dry River Range. In "Boothill Loves a Pilgrim" Harvey T. Watney has been an assistant bookkeeper in a Chicago accounting firm for over twenty years when he unexpectedly inherits a ranch in Montana Territory. Tim Calloway in "White Water Trail" originally left Alaska because he didn't want any part of his father's salmon business, but that was four years ago.

Dan Cushman was born in Osceola, Michigan and grew up on the Cree Indian Reservation in Montana.