What part might genetics play in history repeating itself within a family? This novel asks and suggests one answer. Caroline is an attractive school teacher in 1869 who has made a bargain to act as housekeeper for a widower and tutor for his young son. She has agreed to leave everything she knows in Boston to travel to the territories of Nebraska to live with people she has never met, isolated on 160 acres of homestead. Part One ends with her eleven-year-old stepson being forced to kill a man who assaulted and raped her. Part Two begins with this same boy; now grown, returning to claim his heritage. He is forced to make the same kind of decision he made as a child; whether or not to kill someone again, if it involves saving those he loves. Does history repeat itself? And if so, can the future be altered, based on the past?