When sixteen-year-old Jesse Turner lies about his age and joins Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders to fight the Spanish in Cuba in 1898, he expects to prove himself in battle. What he doesn't expect is a fellow volunteer who is determined to kill him for something his outlaw father did in the past. Jesse and his new friends, New Yorker Will and Ben, a Comanche from the Indian Territories, share the frustrations and hazards of a volunteer military force unprepared for war and the reality of deadly combat. Facing dangers from all sides, the three teens depend on friendship, courage, and integrity to get them through the bloody battles of the Spanish-American War.