Sixteen-year-old Billy Parham lives on a ranch in New Mexico. There is a pregnant wolf roaming around, which Billy tracks down and manages to capture. But instead of destroying it, he decides to take it back to Mexico and set it free.
The world responds to the boy's humanity with cruelty: Billy returns home to find his parents murdered and their horses stolen. This time, he wants to cross the border with his younger brother, fourteen-year-old Boyd, to find the horses. A blind revolutionary, a wandering heretic, a gang of gypsies towing an airplane, beggars, and widows are brought together by chance on the difficult road, which turns out to be a turning point for the boys.
The second part of the highly successful Borderlands trilogy is a harrowing coming-of-age novel similar to Wild Horses and the story of a seemingly timeless, barren otherworldly region and its inhabitants, who are in constant struggle with their fate.

"Because the enmity of the world was again clearly manifested before him that day, of the world which is harsh and irreparable to those who have nothing but themselves to fight against it."