There's a pretty good cowboy story tucked away in the buttcrack of this one, if you're willing to go digging for it. A heroic murderer, a cruel community elder, a gun-toting bishop, a masked rider, and a female Mormon landowner who has the freaking patience of Job and the intense desire to tame herself a cowboy.

Shoot, the opening chapter was pretty damn exciting and didn't dick around about setting up the entire book: Elder Tull hates gentiles and wants to marry Jane, Jane likes gentiles and does NOT want to marry Tull, Elder Tull will ruin Jane's life if necessary, and Lassiter shoots Mormons. Here we freaking go!

But Grey drops the ball. He's at least aware of his weaknesses as a writer (the dialogue, oh goodness), but the exciting scenes are separated by loooong stretches of nothing. There are some interesting twists at the end, but they don't do much to cover the more problematic elements of the story. Biggest is probably the character Bess, who is basically a talking piece of scenery, and Mormons in general are given an uncomfortably broad stroke (the few 'good' ones usually have a guilt complex or are women, or both).

It's kinda fun, though. And while Grey can be an obnoxious trumpet of adjectives, adverbs, and other verbal upchuck, he does set alive a gorgeous, thundering scene every once in a while.