Ten years after the events of Riders of the Purple Sage, John Shefford, a disillusioned preacher from Illinois travels to Arizona and takes refuge in a village controlled by polygamist Mormons hiding from the federal government. It's there Shefford learns the story of Fay Larkin: years ago, the infant Fay, along with Jane Withersteen and a gunslinger known as Lassiter, were trapped in Surprise Valley. Intrigued, Shefford decides to track Fay down....

Fleeing a difficult past, John Shefford heads out from Illinois, lured west only by a legend of three people living in Utah's isolated Surprise Valley, one of whom is Fay Larkin, a young woman whom John has never met but is already half in love with. He is unprepared for--and captivated by--the high desert landscape of Arizona, its people, and how it will shape his life.