With over 10 million copies sold, bestselling author Robert James Waller returns with another haunting, evocative story. The wild places are where no one is looking anymore. Out on the high plains, among Sioux reservations and silent buttes, you can hear the wind. And on the back of the wind is the sound of an old accordion mingling with the lonely thump of a single drum in the nighttime and a far-off warrior's cry. To this, to a town called Salamander, comes Carlisle McMillan, a traveler and carpenter seeking a place of quiet amid the grinding roar of progess. There he finds two very different women: Gally Deveraux, who works at a diner and longs for something more than she is, and Susanna Benteen, beautiful and enigmatic, whom the town has labeled a witch .The woman, Carlisle's carpenter's trade, and an old Indian known as Flute Player bring Carlist a sense of contentment for a while. But his quiest is shattered as a bulldozer treads begin to turn and the Yerkes County War commences.