Frannie Cooper's story is a true one, its pages drawn from historical documents and from the people who knew her. In 1894, with Idaho a new and tempestuous state, Frannie's conflict-ridden husband shoots a man in the back-with no rational explanation. Knowing the community is on the verge of hanging him, Frannie admits infidelity in a court of law. The lie destroys her reputation and gives her vindictive husband an opening to sever the most precious bonds a woman will ever forge, those with her children. Mormon Church records say Frannie was born in 1864 in a settlement north of Salt Lake City, the sixth daughter of a devout pioneer family. With gossip in the wind as to whether the dark-eyed Frannie is a true daughter of the Cooper family-perhaps the child of a Scots trapper and an Indian woman instead-even her birthright seems compromised. But faced with losing her children over an ill-conceived lie, she reaches deep in her family heritage for the strength to endure.