Post Civil War Richmond, VA, her journey begins with the horribly tragic death of both parents. Her true gender hidden from the master blacksmith and controlling patriarch of the family who took her in, she is raised before the forge. As young as five, she embraces the hammers of a smith and the chisels of a farrier. Her unusual childhood is shaped and influenced by the blacksmiths, the women who love them and the sons of the patriarch. Under the tutelage of a freed slave and a Jamaican mulato, her unconventional personality and sexuality emerge. Longing for her own blacksmith shop and dreaming of the right to vote, in 1889 she embarks on her journey west, towards Wyoming Territory. Along the way, traveling with a Clydesdale, Maine Coon and Nubian goat, the encounters she experiences build her confidence, expand her mind and push her westward. Arriving in Dubois, Wyoming she finds that all her desires, all that lured her west, are far more heated than any fires she had previously stoked.