Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than 200 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.’s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family: J.B.’s cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and his teenage sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed, exposing the conflicted heart of a nation caught between past and future.

When the earthquake brings Annie Lark’s Missouri house down on top of her, she finds herself Facing certain death. Rescued by Jacques Ducharme, Annie learns to love the strong, brooding man and resolves to live out her days as his “River Wife.” More than a century later Hedie Rails comes to Jacques’ Landing to marry Clement Ducharme, and the young couple begin their life together in the very house Jacques built for Annie so long ago. When, night after late night, mysterious phone calls take Clement from their home, a pregnant Hedie finds comfort in Annie’s leather-bound journals. But as she reads of the sinister dealings that spelled out tragedy for the rescued bride, Hedie fears that her own life is paralleling Annie’s, and that history is repeating itself with Jacques’ kin.