It's a volatile new economy in Durant, Wyoming when the owners of a multimillion-dollar development of ranchettes want to get rid of the adjacent Stewart junkyard. Meeting the notorious Stewart clan is an adventure unto itself, and when conflict erupts--and someone ends up dead--Sheriff Walt Longmire, his lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear, and deputies Santiago Saizarbitoria and Victoria Moretti find themselves in a small town that feels more and more like a high-plains pressure cooker.

Walt Longmire is up to his badge in the darker aspects of human nature, making his way through the case with a combination of love, laughs, and derelict automobiles.