Every year, Christopher, a widower, travels from his Nova Scotia farm to Manhattan to sell his Christmas trees. Catherine, a widow no longer enjoys Christmas since her husband passed away on Christmas Eve a few years earlier.

"It was a time of uncertainty in the infancy of the growing nation. The Wild West was open and beckoning to displaced men and families, and many chose to travel to the unsettled frontier, dreaming of new homes, land, and even riches. But few reckoned on those that had lived in those lands for centuries, the native peoples: Blackfoot, Crow, Sioux, and more. Elijah McCain, fresh from the Union army -- where he had attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel...