Set against the vastness of Montana's Big Sky country in the years after the Civil War, and against the epic tragedy of the Cheyenne (the People of the Morning Star), here is the story of Joel Ryan and the two courageous, beautiful and very different women he loved. Desperate to put the ravages of the Civil War behind him, Joel Ryan travels west. But he soon finds that the solitude he so desperately craves is not to be his. Early in his journey he rescues a beautiful Cheyenne princess, Mourning Dove, from Henri Larocque, a renegade Canadian who had intended to sell her to an enemy tribe. Even as Joel frees her, she frees his heart from the sorrow that has darkened it- with a love so strong it will cause them to defy her people. Banished from the Cheyenne tribe, they make their home on the vast plains and have a son. but their happiness is shattered when Larocque comes again to take his revenge on Joel, killing Mourning Dove. Joel's tragic loss nearly destroys him and fills him with a need for vengeance so great it will shape his life forever. He sends his son back to the Cheyenne until he can find his wife's murderer and, years later, returns defeated. He reclaims his son, now a young brave, but feeling unequal to the task of raising him alone, sends east for a mail-order bride. What he gets is Sarah Joy McClinton and her two children, running from the man whose greed killed her husband. Each hopes that the match will result in at least mutual respect and friendship. But Sarah does not know that Joel Ryan will conquer her heart so completely that she would give her life to him. or willingly lose it for him.