On the eve of the industrial age, twelve-year-old Jake Longmire watches an outlaw named Paul Duncan gun down his parents at the unveiling of the first riven-fueled locomotive. He also sees something no one else will admit to seeing: an invisible hand closing around his mother’s throat, leaving burns no one can explain.

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Duncan flees west across the Haunted Plains, a land teeming with ghosts that can break bones, steal memories, and drain the life from anything they catch.

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Jake vows revenge. But no one survives the crossing alone, and the only guide he can get is Kate Slade, a cynical dustrunner trading a jail sentence for the job. She thinks she’s escorting an orphan. She has no idea Jake means to make himself the bait.

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The trail west is marked by false friends and a slaughtered homestead whose dead bear the same burns Jake saw on his mother’s throat. Jake has set the trap. Now Duncan is coming, and so is the thing that killed his mother.

 

But how close can a boy get to a monster before he becomes one?