Two distinguished English youths bought the Cordovan government four leagues of field south of Fraile Muerto, today Bell Ville, in 1865. Argentina then began the laborious takeoff that, from a miserable country, incommunicado and torn by fifty years of foreign and civil wars, in the following fifty years would make it one of the six richest countries in the world. < Juan Carlos Casas makes a realistic painting of the clash between the culture of the newcomers and the creole, and of the dangerous life of those who began to populate the Pampean deserts, especially if they settled near the border with the warlike ranqueles Indians. The novel is based on real events and is the result of a rigorous investigation that began with the memoirs written by two of the protagonists published under the title Pioneering in the Pampas. Casas adds to them the necessary dose of fiction that turns Fraile Muerto into a pulsating history where gauchos, "decent" Creoles, English and Indians mix: highwaymen and railroads: Catholic priests and Protestant pastors and Mapuche sorcerers; supporters and opponents of the war with Paraguay; rancile caciques and commanders of the National Guard; stable racers and jockeys racing English; the judgments and prejudices of each other; the disturbing conscience of an Englishman for his presumed cowardice and the contempt of a creole towards the one who abandoned her. A work that invites you to know how the ancestors of today's Argentines worked, thought, loved and lived.