Virgil Caudill has always toed the line of the law, leaving the hell-raising to his brother, Boyd. Now Boyd is dead, and everyone - even the sheriff and Virgil's own mother - expects Virgil to avenge the death, fulfilling the old unwritten code of the Kentucky hills. Virgil cannot break that code, but he is determined to escape the cycle of retaliation. He gives up not only his modest hopes but his identity and, like countless fugitives before him, heads west. There, among people who are as foreign to him as the stark Montana landscape, he finds love, purpose, community - all that he left behind. But just when his dreams are within reach, the past overtakes him, with devastating consequences.