What is the unforeseen force that drives young Henry Jaeger from his roots, upon a pilgrimage into the darkness and then into the light? Repeatedly visited by both fortune and misfortune, he is driven to the extremes of human kindness and overt savagery, by the unseen. What is created out of the wilderness, is a livestock and grain empire lasting many generations.

The story leaps ahead a century, when another young 'Jaeger' returns from the US Marines, enters college and achieves gridiron immortality, only to travel the same "Long Dark Ride", as did his forebears, the legendary "Ghost Dancer", many generations ago.