When Charlie Jones, a full blood Osage, passes away he leaves behind a vast oil empire and a family fighting for its control. He also leaves behind a memoir. In its pages Charlie tells of his turbulent and violent past. Beginning with his witness to the torture and death of his father at the hands of cattle thieves, he details his time spent with the infamous outlaw Belle Starr. Most passionately he reveals the tumultuous, doomed love that brought him to the edge of self-destruction and became his only true reason for living. Charlie, it seems, was a man of tremendous secrets. The greatest of which stands behind Charlie's entrusting of this volatile memoir to a man who many of his surviving family members consider his enemy. Deeply moving, this story is painted on a canvas rich in Osage culture and history.