By night he is haunted by his previous exploits and by the ghost of his daughter, Maud, who died while working for one of his colleagues. Sternberg is not the only sleepless soul in the camp. Lily, a young assistant on the expedition, has had no mail from Sternberg’s protege, Scott Cameron, who is fighting in the trenches in France; she fears the worst. As the novel progresses, Bowling brings to life this fascinating period in scientific exploration, reaching back to the “Bone Wars” that took place between Edward Drinker Cope and his rival Othniel Marsh in the late nineteenth century as the two men criss-crossed the American West in search of new species and the notoriety that came with discovery.