After a self-imposed exile to recover from one woman too many, Wes Berry, a quarter Mahyakma Indian, returns to his Northern California home town of Wildfire and wants only to settle into the simple, redwood country life and grow his startup gardening business. But then Ivy Hooper, a gorgeous, gun-toting, pill-popping L.A. babe shows up and rocks his laid back world like an earthquake by claiming that, despite the official story of a drug overdose, Wes's long-lost first love, Isabel Zane, was murdered in her L.A. area home by someone from Wildfire. Wes and the luscious former beauty queen combine forces to unearth the secrets behind Isabel's death and discover a twisted trail of money, sex and blood that leads to the big money man, a local Jack Abramoff, who is behind a proposed Indian casino-resort in a Zane family redwood preserve outside Wildfire. This local big shot, following in the footsteps of his forebears who murdered Mahyakmas to steal their land, may have killed Isabel to get her land for the casino. Obsessed with the wholesale slaughter of his ancestors and the theft of their land, even the slimmest hope of payback in blood makes Wes's mouth water. When they close in on the killer, and Ivy and a state senator are kidnapped as part of a scheme to rob casino money, Wes's rescue attempt finds him looking over the sights of a .38 at the big money man himself, the later day face of the killers of his people. And he sees his chance for revenge.