Two centuries, three journeys, one epic American adventure.
Why, after so long, does old man Eddie Reno quit his job at the K-Mart and head north from the Florida Keys, chasing what had once been his celebrated life? And why, a century earlier, does crippled war photographer Matthew Princeton leave his New Orleans whorehouse for a journey through his past to America's wild frontier - to the land of Crazy Horse and Custer's Last Stand?
And why, thirty years after her husband's death, is Libbie Custer stranded on board the SS "Liberation" in the middle of the Atlantic in the company of a large Russian bear?
These multiple narrative strands twist and turn like tree-roots underground - working through echo and juxtaposition, reflecting the way in which fate resolves through cruel irony and the practical jokery of history - their meaning and connection at first only glimpsed but gradually, inexorably, horrifyingly, becoming clear.
