Karen P.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”

Armed with only a Colt rifle, a Bowie knife, and courage as big as the West, Ten Chisholm—the bold, illegitimate son of frontier scout and plains ambassador Jesse Chisholm and a Cherokee woman—arrives in the heart of Comanche country with a price on his head. His only crime: loving the beautiful daughter of a powerful New Orleans gambler who has promised her to a wealthy man she hates.