A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy--but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit.

Rich easterner Janey Endicott comes to Arizona with her father, where she is bored until she meets archeologist Phillip Randolph, who is investigating ancient Indian pueblos in the midst of the West's wild culture.