Young Ty Hardin weathers the Great Depression by becoming an apprentice to Fenton Pardee, the last of the great packers; and when he is wounded during the war, he returns back to the Montana mountains he has grown to love.

Military sniper Tommy Smith returns to his former life as a cowboy and wilderness guide in California's Sierra Nevada, but his peaceful life is compromised when he discovers a wrecked plane that draws him into a world of violence.

"Nora Kelly, a young but successful curator at the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute, is approached by a historian, Clive Benton, with the opportunity to lead an expedition unlike any other. It begins with the story of the ill-fated Donner Party, who became permanently lodged in the American consciousness in the winter of 1847, when the first skeletonized survivors of the party stumbled out of the California mountains, replete with tales of courage,...