American settlers face a series of brutal reprisals after outlaws murder a group of Shawnee Indians on the Virginia frontier in 1774. During the calamitous events that follow, British colonists, Shawnee warriors, a young slave girl, and an Irish indentured servant must find a way to survive a bloody war that threatens to destroy their entire way of life. Some discover an inner strength they did not think possible. Others sink to the deepest recesses of their humanity. In the end, no one is left unchanged.

Lord Dunmore has returned to Williamsburg and is faced with the realization that the same men he mobilized to fight the Shawnee Nation are now preparing to join the rebellion against King George III and Great Britain. Willing to do anything to keep Virginia under Great Britain’s flag, Dunmore conspires with a mysterious agent from Pennsylvania to assassinate the leaders of the patriot movement in Virginia before they can launch a full-scale war against the Crown. The intrigue, espionage, and murders produced by Dunmore’s plot forces John Dickinson, Lydia Townsend, Red Hawk, Cornstalk, Logan, and Henri Thevenin, to once again risk everything to protect their families and homes.