A "tough, honed-to-the-bone thriller" of family, revenge, and organized crime along the border of Texas and Mexico—from the award-winning author (The Dallas Morning News).

Eddie Gato Wolfe is a young, impetuous member of the Wolfe family of Texas gun-runners that goes back generations. Increasingly unfulfilled by his minor role in family operations and eager to set out on his own, Eddie crosses the border to work security for a major Mexican drug cartel led by the ruthless La Navaja.

Falling for a mysterious woman named Miranda, Eddie learns too late that an intimate member of La Navaja's organization considers her his property. When their romance is discovered, Eddie and Miranda are forced to run for their lives, fleeing into the deadly Sonora Desert in hope of crossing the border to safety. But La Navaja's reach is far and his lust for revenge insatiable. If La Navaja's men don't kill Eddie and Miranda, the brutal desert just may. Their only hope: help from the family that Eddie abandoned.

A Men's Journal Best Book of the Year that was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger, this intimate look inside the Mexican drug trade is "one hell of a ride" (Booklist, starred review).

"Brilliant . . . Blake's masterful action-driven narrative and his revealing look at the ultraviolent Mexican drug trade rival the best of Don Winslow and Kem Nunn." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Blake's customary zest for life and death makes his latest modern historical thriller violent, sexy and exciting." —Kirkus Reviews

"This sand-blasted odyssey is quick, bloody and beautiful with prose as eloquent and unexpected as a cactus flower." —Madison County Herald