In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband, and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered valley. Twelve-year-old Caleb must tend to his mother until she recovers enough for them to take to the frozen wilderness in...

For more than twenty years John Ford and John Wayne were a blockbuster Hollywood team, turning out many of the finest Western films ever made. Ford, known for his black eye patch and for his hard-drinking, brawling masculinity, was a son of Irish immigrants and was renowned as a director for both his craftsmanship and his brutality. John "Duke" Wayne was a mere stagehand and bit player in "B" Westerns, but he was strapping and handsome, and Ford saw...

Sam Bonner is a household name. He spent his life within the best-known circles of Hollywood. His name on a film guaranteed a gross of millions. Every actor and actress wanted to star in a Bonner film, and Bonner's casting choices made or broke careers; after all, he controlled the game. Success was so easy for him but in the bicentennial summer of 1976, a nation turned two hundred, and Sam's game has plateaued. On the road with his third wife, Sara,...