Blue skies, rolling plains —and enough wide-open space to hide a horrifying secret. Best Book of the Year: Esquire, Washington Post, Vulture'Deftly weaves history, horror, suspense, and the perspectives of those rarely recorded in the West.' The New York TimesA woman with a past, a mysterious trunk, a town on the edge of nowhere. Montana, 1915.

When the US government offers Americans free land to those who can tame it, Adelaide Henry leaps at the chance. She’s fleeing from California and the family home that was left behind in flames. With no choice but to run, Adelaide becomes a ‘lone woman’, a female homesteader staking her claim on the unforgiving Montana soil.

Yet, no matter how far she goes, Adelaide’s past is not so easily left behind. With her is an enormous steamer trunk that must stay closed at all times, and a secret inside that destroyed her family. But secrets cannot be stay locked up forever, and it isn’t long before her fellow homesteaders notice what Adelaide has desperately tried to hide – wherever she and her deadly cargo go, tragedy and terror follow.

The American West is lonely and brutal, and that which Adelaide has tried so hard to escape may be the only thing that will help her survive.