Annie Clark Cole's sweeping Western adventure follows Vick Porter a young card sharp from the backwood hollers of Arkansas in the mid 1800's to the saloons and card rooms in West Texas, to the bayous and brutal prisons in Louisiana, and finally through the epic changes of the American frontier into the dawn of the 20th Century. Vick''s nemesis, the conniving, insidious con man and gambler Buck Dupree, teaches Vick the detailed techniques of a professional card shark, but becomes threatened by his student who can not only outplay him, but is a masterful hand with a gun, making him a double threat. Once Buck realizes he has created his own worst enemy, he double-crosses Vick dooming him to an unimaginable horrific future. Struggle and survival, loss and ruin, victory and achievement, and a refusal to ever give up--theses are the harsh realities--yet the rewarding currencies of the American West. Can anything save Vick and his kin from sabotage and ruin? Can love? Can revenge? Vick Porter and his family are what legends are made of...