The Pioneers
He escaped the grimy tenements of New York for the promise of the American West—only to find that some secrets refuse to be left behind.
NEW YORK CITY, 1889 In the suffocating, trash-strewn alleys of theLower East Side, eighteen-year-old Jesse Morgan survives the only way he knows how: by dreaming. Deeply entrenched in the thrilling pages of his aunt’s dime novels, Jesse imagines himself a righteous hero of the frontier, a man far removed from the dirt, disease, and crushing labor of the tenements. But when a brutal neighborhood prank goes horribly wrong, Jesse is left believing he has committed the ultimate sin. Shattered by guilt and fleeing the wrath of a vengeful street gang, he turns his back on the only home he has ever known and heads west to forge a new destiny.
Just as Jesse begins to find his footing, the past collides with his fragile new reality in the most unexpected way. Stranded aboard a steamboat, he crosses paths with Emily Barnes—the sharp-witted, independent typewriter girl from New York who once saved him from a street brawl. Operating under a deep-cover alias, Emily is a fiercely ambitious investigative reporter tracking corporate corruption, and she holds the staggering truth about the crime Jesse thinks he committed.
But Emily isn’t the only one who has tracked Jesse down. Shadows are lengthening on the river, and a cold-blooded security agent with a dark agenda is closing in and Jesse must finally cast aside his boyhood fantasies to find his salvation on the plains of the great American West.
