Based on a true incident and set in the early 1850's in California's gold country, "Harry, Mary, and Joaquin Murrieta" is a tale of racial prejudice, lust, murder, revenge, politics, and love. It is the story of Captain Harry Love, a veteran of the Mexican American War and former Texas Ranger, tough but not too bright, and his courtship and marriage to Henrietta Boone, tougher and brighter, and who masterminds Harry to his eventual appointment by the State of California to be the Head of the California Rangers for the three months of its existence. His task is to pursue California's most colorful and legendary bandit, "Joaquin," with the express purpose of bringing back his decapitated head. Harry's fatal mistake, like Hamlet's, is that he doesn't act when he should have--when it was expedient--for Harry unwittingly unfolds a drama that affects a large number of people; and a drama that envelopes the rest of his life, and one for which he winds up paying the ultimate price.