The dark reverberations of a wrong never made right

Nebraska Territory, 1841. Born at the scene of an atrocity, an infant-the sole survivor of his family's slaughter-is rescued and fostered by settlers traveling west. A letter written in blood in a strange language and his mother's necklace are the only traces of his lineage carried with him.

Nearly twenty years later, people throughout the West-an aging sheriff in a Nevada town, a teenaged girl in an oppressive Utah religious sect, a foreman on the Pacific Railroad build-encounter an unprecedented threat they can't comprehend. A stranger appears to these communities in crisis, offering help-but is he a savior or somehow linked to the rising wave of undead? One thing is clear: He understands the creatures in a way no one else does.