Fourth novel of the sweeping of epic saga compared by reviewers, authors and readers to , and Louis L'Amour (with steam).  Called by some reviewers, the " of the West," and “the on steroids.” Applauded by others as, "rings true and poignant, as authentic and moving as . This multiple #1 bestselling series—winner of thirty-seven National Awards, (including Best Historical Fiction, Best Multi-Cultural, Best Romance, and Best Western)—bursts with the adventure, romance and promise of historical America set in the West.The epic saga of begins in 1854 with Book One. We meet the first of five richly textured, complex generations of unforgettable characters. The separate lives of these driven men and independent women are drawn to a common destiny that beckons seductively from the wild and remote flanks of the American West.In Book Two, they are swept into the dangerous currents of the far-distant frontier by the mysterious rivers of fate, the power of the land and the American spirit. Secret maps, hidden ambitions, and magnetic attractions inherent in lives forged by the fires of love and loss, hope and sorrow, life and death, shape their futures and the destinies of their lineage.In Book Three, the men and women of the saga having reached their initial destination: pre-Denver, Cherry Creek, are each faced with life altering decisions. Some must decide to pursue or abandon torrid love affairs that have flowered on the dangerous journey from Europe and across America. An aristocratic vaquero chased north by the Texas Rangers catapults into the tale. The next generation of Threads West characters will soon be born in the wilderness.  The elderly slave couple, the Oglala Sioux and Mountain Ute families, and the dark hearted renegade— with his young, traumatized captive introduced in —are bound ever more tightly to the arc of the tale— their tragedy and triumph-filled tales weaving into the cloth of a collective destiny.In , Book Four, the brave, passion-filled characters of struggle in this unknown wilderness, racing against an early, foreboding winter to establish their homestead, some preoccupied with serious pre-birth complications of the next generation of characters, other's compelled by an inner sense to blaze a separate trail, but all united to fend off ever-present dangers. The different personalities of their surviving offspring begin to manifest, some in disturbing ways. The Sioux family, bewildered by the increasing attack on their culture, is swept unknowingly into the tumultuous vortex of momentous changes shaping the United States and the West as the tidal wave of greed and intolerance inundates their ancestral territory.  The Ute Chief makes a decision affecting generations, but his wife faces a fateful dilemma. Land, love, gold, tradition and the burden of family responsibility shape these characters of divergent origin as they love and struggle in the beautifully vibrant but unforgiving landscape of the West. The personal conflicts inherent to these characters of uncommon cultures, differing origins and competing ambitions are exacerbated by a nation in transition, the precipice of Civil War, and both deep bonds and lethal enmities with Native Americans.