Ellie has always known her role as a woman of the mountains. Taking care of her family, hunting, panhandling, and running the family store is all she deserved. Raised in rural Northern Washington Territory in 1884 around other "roughnecks," she knows her place. That is, until one fatal morning when everything changes. As Ellie's family foundation is dismantled log by log, she must face her destructive past and her unknown future. Ellie must either accept help from unlikely allies or become part of the local violent outlaw authority to survive. Choosing between two men, two lives, and two sides. is an adult literary Bildungsroman Western novel, that follows a woman in love, a woman in grief, and a woman in unfamiliar territory.