Seven decades of passion and sin fester beneath the bleak Montana sky. In the spectral beauty of these pages you will meet: the Eastern-bred mortician who discovers love after death; the rancher's beautiful daughter who delivers death after love; the old cowboy whose survival skills turn against him; and the gunslinger, dressed in black, who tries to outdraw the modern age on the blacktop of present-day Montana. "The grimmest of fairy tales" - William Hjortsberg