James Carlos Blake is a masterful chronicler of the restless, outcast, lawless, and lonely heart. His previous novel, In the Rogue Blood, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. Now he has written a powerful and gripping historical saga about family loyalties, blood feuds, and betrayed friendships, about bank robberies and smuggling, as well as a passionate love that is as wild as the Everglades. It is the story of sworn enemies: John Ashley, a criminal and folk hero, the brightest star in a family destined to become the most notorious in South Florida, and Bobby Baker, a lawman born of lawmen, a violent, hard-hearted man driven by the burning memory of past slights and the enduring hatred they have spawned. Ashley and Baker will often clash over many decades. As the twentieth century encroaches upon their world and the wilderness gives way to the burgeoning boomtown of Miami, a wild, sensual connection will put one man in great danger, while his adversary plots a dark, personal revenge that could plunge countless lives, including his own, into ruin.