Sam Bonham bad husband, deadbeat dad, and possible criminal on the run from the law wanders out of modern-day East Texas into an ersatz Wild West boomtown created for a movie that never happened. And when Sam strikes a blow against the gangsters who ve been terrorizing the town, the locals look to him to save them. He s no hero, but he s stumbled upon someone who is: John Wayne. But the John Wayne of this story is not the stalwart lawman of Hollywood films he s a seventy-two-year-old man who had himself cryogenically frozen. He s weak, bald, frail and unrecognizable to everyone but Sam.
In The Duke s defrosted state, he s not entirely himself. In fact, he believes he s actually Ethan Edwards, the character he played in "The Searchers," one of Wayne s most beloved films. Ethan or Duke or Marion Morrison, at his side Sam learns how to be a man, and a hero and a pretty good shot As he takes on the Old West gang of thugs, he finds that he might have become a family man at last. But back in the real world, someone has his eye on Sam s wife, and if Sam doesn t get back soon, the results could be devastating."