Develyn heads west to find an innocence and a life she had experienced on a vacation when she was ten. There, Develyn finds not only her past, but her present and future as well. She discovers all of this in a paint mare, a quirky new girlfriend, three men who help her get her life in focus . . . and among the people of a dirt road town in cental Wyoming.

Pepper Paige is sick and tired of her life. Sick of the fighting and emptiness that surround her as a dance-hall girl - and tired of fearing Jordan Beckett, a violent patron who has turned his attentions on her. Pepper gets her chance to escape when a woman injured in a stagecoach wreck dies in her room. Before she dies, the stranger - a refined, educated Christian - informs Pepper that she was on her way west to marry a rancher she knew only through...

When the President of the United States calls upon retired lawman Stuart Brannon to find vanished Tim Wiseman, Brannon leaves his beloved Arizona Territory and heads to Portland, Oregon for the case.