Cash McLendon has always had an instinct for self-preservation, honed by an impoverished childhood with an alcoholic father on the streets of St. Louis. He eventually builds himself up to become the son-in-law and heir apparent to industrial mogul Rupert Douglass. But when tragedy strikes and his life falls apart, his instinct for survival kicks in and he flees St. Louis before Douglass and his enforcer can track him down.

With nothing to lose, McLendon decides to search out an old flame. He's heard through the grapevine that Gabrielle and her father moved their dry goods store out west, to a speck-on-the-map mining town named Glorious, in Arizona Territory. There, as he tries to win her back, he discovers a new life and community. But he can't outrun his past forever...