At fifteen, Mattie is abandoned in the Rocky Mountains after her frontier father, Jib Owen, just up and walks away, leaving her and her younger brother, Thomas, to live or die at their own leisure. Mattieas desperation turns to hate for Jib and hate is a powerful thing. Hate helps Mattie to survive and even prosper. But when Thomas takes off for Desert Rose, wins a freighting business in a card game and then gets killed, Mattie finds herself once again in circumstances not of her doing, only this time itas eight hundred miles away in Desert Rose. There she meets Kane Kyker, a calloused Civil War veteran and the only man sheas ever trusted enough to leave in charge of a small herd of cows. They partner up to settle a score long overdue in settling. Desert Rose is a moving Western tale of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, damnation and redemption.