"Mathieu Etchiberri wants nothing more than to leave his familys Arizona sheep ranch and go to college, but his father insists that he take over the ranch instead. Then his father is killed in an accident, and Matt discovers that he is not the heir to the ranch. So he travels to the French Pyrenees from which his father and grandparents came to settle the questions about his legacy. Instead, he discovers a vast Basque family and a mystery that drove...

In 1250 AD, in an obscure corner of northeastern Spain at the foot of the Pyrenees, ancient Basque traditions collide with the onslaught of Christianity. Amika, a young Basque girl on the brink of adulthood and her mother, a healer, awake in the night to the howls of an angry mob approaching their hut. Torches fly and their hut goes up in flames. The rabid throng drags her mother away to be burned at the stake as a witch. Amika flees in terror into...

Settled in the western Pyrenees Mountains, the Basque nation is not drawn on maps and the origin of their forbidden language has never been discovered. Yet, Basques appear to predate all other cultures in Europe, with many significant global contributions to their credit.

The account a son writes of his father, an old Basque sheepherder who lived and worked in the American West for most of his life, who, in fulfilling his dream of returning to the Pyrenees, came to a new realization of what America meant to him.