When Zach Connors and his pa left their Kentucky homestead in the summer of 1824 to see the Rocky Mountains, he didn't realize he would never see his childhood home again or that he would find love, friendship, fame, and a new home in this wild and harsh wilderness.

After a grizzly kills his pa, Zach struggles to survive a cold and brutal winter alone. After killing a rouge grizzly and fighting hostile Indians on his own, he becomes known as Grizzly Killer and is respected throughout the West.

Along with his dog, Jimbo, whom the Indians call the Great Medicine Dog, he finds Running Wolf, an injured Ute warrior, and together they fight off a hostile war party. They rescue two Shoshone sisters from the brutality of a French trapper and take them as wives. After Zach saves Running Wolf's beautiful sister, Shining Star, he is expected to take her as a second wife, but his Christian beliefs conflict with the Indian traditions, and he struggles within himself to accept the Indian ways.

Set in the rugged Uinta Mountains of Northern Utah, this is a story of survival against nature and hostile Indians and the clash of cultures between the Indians and mountain men that were the first to brave this uncharted wilderness, seeking their fortune from the pelts of the beaver.