Lower Missouri River, late summer 1835. Two brothers, fur trappers Zebadiah and Jonathan Creed, are bushwhacked. Jonathan is murdered and Zebadiah left for dead. Zeb is found by a Quaker doctor and his daughter, who nurse him back to health and insist he stay with them. But the appeal of a peaceful life cannot quell Zeb's burning desire for revenge and he sets out to find the two men who killed his brother. In recounting his search, Zebadiah Creed spins an exciting tale that leads readers by steamboat down the Great Mississippi to St. Louis and on to New Orleans, where Zeb finds revenge is never as simple as killing a man, and retribution and redemption are not the same.