Hamish Graham is intelligent, disciplined, resourceful and fearless, and scorns all weakness. His heroes include Charles Upham, Alexander the Great and Te Rauparaha - all men of action. But he is also a fourteen-year-old with an anger problem and a disturbing past, and these have landed him in a series of boys' homes for violent and troubled young offenders. The gripping series of events following his arrival at New Horizons culminates in a desperate rescue mission on a mountain that has already claimed the lives of two young soldiers.