When you look at Joe Gilead, at first you see a man bled of emotions, drawn cold by long years in prison. But look again, and you'll see another man a man very much alive, whose eyes are emerald in fury, and his face ghostly pale with thin scars. You'll believe that murder is in Joe Gilead perhaps even the murder of his own brother. Joe was born in the violent Dakota country they called the Badlands, named for the fear they inspired yet holding their own beauty and life. There's something hiding out in those Badlands now that is strangling Joe's father, and destroying the life the old man had fought to build from that boundless land. Joe will have to break the bonds of kin and the laws of strangers in order to set his trap and clear his name.