ake Garner grew up on an isolated ranch in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, with a drunk for a father and a bully for a big brother. He often ventured into the mountains to hunt game for the dinner table, the only protection his mother could offer. Jake’s favorite place to go was a no-name canyon back in the Bitterroots that, a half-century ago, was relatively unknown. In all the times he went there, he never saw another soul. After serving three tours in Vietnam, and staying as far from the Bitterroots — and his brother and father — as possible, Jake is finally forced home by a serious stomach wound that refuses to heal. But his mother and brother are gone, killed in a car wreck while Jake is recuperating in a Hawaii hospital. His ailing father passes away soon thereafter. So when Jake finally gets home, the house is empty and the small ranch he grew up on is his. When tragedy strikes again, Jake, alone and filled with grief, returns to his canyon once more. And while there observing an eagle on the hunt, he also observes an attempted murder. As he becomes embroiled in trying to stop it, sort it out, and save the victim, he discovers he must also save himself.
