Reared in isolation by her father on the Western prairie, Mary Dove has been taught to fear only one thing. One sparkling October day it happens. The inevitable stranger rides in off the plains, and Mary Dove does what she had always promised her father she would she shoots.Yet compassion overcomes Mary's fear. In remorse, she tends to the wounded stranger, and what follows is their tentative discovery of each other and a love story that weaves universal and timeless themes.The mother who died before Mary Dove could know her was African-American. And so completely has Mary Dove's father...