Set in the harsh desert world of the Arizona Territory and northern Mexico during the 1870s, Written in Blood, the first installment of the Desert Legends Trilogy, follows young Jim Doolen as he attempts to find some trace of the father who abandoned his family ten years earlier. As he travels through a scorched landscape very different from the lush West Coast forests of his home, Jim crosses paths with an assortment of intriguing characters, including an Apache warrior, a cave-dwelling mystic, an old Mexican revolutionary and a mysterious cowboy. And with each encounter he learns something more of the strange world he has entered and adds one more link in a chain that leads back to his father-and back to a dark, violent past. As his story approaches its thrilling conclusion in a ruined Mexican hacienda, Jim comes to realize that his father's life was much more complex than he had imagined, and that, in discovering his past, he has opened the way to his future.

In the second installment of the Desert Legends Trilogy, Ghost Moon follows young James Doolen's story after he discovers the terrible truth about his father in Written in Blood. The year is 1878, and young Jim is not yet ready to return to Canada. Instead he heads up to New Mexico in hopes of finding work and building a life. On the way he meets Bill Bonney (later to be known as Billy the Kid), who takes him to a ranch south of the town of Lincoln, where they both find work as cowboys. Little does Jim know that he is about to get caught up in a vicious battle for the lucrative army contracts with nearby Fort Stanton. As the violence explodes around him, Jim becomes a helpless witness to cold-blooded murder and watches as Bill swears revenge and leads a gang of killers into the hills. However hard he tries, Jim can't escape the violence and is finally drawn into its bloody conclusion on the streets of Lincoln.

Jim Doolen discovered his father's fate in Written in Blood and met Billy the Kid in Ghost Moon. Now, in the final installment of The Desert Legends Trilogy, he's a scout for the Army in the middle of a brutal war to force Victorio's Apaches onto a reservation far from their traditional lands. Deeply troubled by the violence he's witnessed and been a part of, and having lost so many friends, both white and Indian, Jim feels trapped between the two worlds he's encountered over the past three years. Captured by his nemesis Ghost Moon and forced to flee with an Apache band of warriors, Jim is only saved from a slow and torturous death when his old friend Wellington adopts him as his son. But now he's on the wrong side. Will he be branded a traitor? Or killed in a battle with the 10th US Cavalry or the Mexican Army? Jim finds his loyalties now divided, and he begins to understand the plight of his captors. But as supplies and ammunition run out, Jim's fate is tied to that of the doomed Apache warriors and survival seems unlikely.