It's the spring of 1864, and times are hard in Washington County, Arkansas, especially for thirteen-year-old Travis Ford. He hasn't heard from his father, a sergeant in the 2nd Arkansas Cavalry, in months. His mother is struggling to make ends meet on the family farm near Poison Spring. All Travis really wants to do is to follow his passion--to make up adventure stories in the style of Alexandre Dumas. But the Civil War keeps getting in his way....

Bass Reeves was a man of color and a deputy United States marshal. For thirteen years he was sided by deputy marshal Dave Adams, a white man. Bennie Reeves was Bass' son, who shot down his unarmed wife who had been cheating on him and then disappeared. U.S. Marshal Leo E. Bennett had reservations about handing the warrant to Bass Reeves to be served against Bennie, but for Bass there was no reservation. His son had broken the law and was a fugitive....

"A fictionalized account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, or Greasy Grass as the Indians called it, told by a series of first-hand accounts from both white and Indian points of view provides a panorama of the battle in which a sense of what most likely happened powerfully emerges"--