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Incarcerated six years in a Mississippi state penal farm for a crime he didn't commit, Jo Shelby Ferguson is released a few weeks after a car accident has taken what he thinks to be the last members of his family. The only earthly possession left to him is an old trunk. Among the family heirlooms stored there, Jo Shelby finds a cache of age-worn letters written by his great-great-great-grandmother. A story unfolds in the chronologically arranged missives: the flight to Mexico with General J. O. Shelby of Missouri following the collapse of the Confederacy; countless trials and tribulations, the ineluctable confrontation with the Juaristas.
With only forty dollars in his pocket, and old Navy Colt revolver that doesn't shoot, his grandfather's Barlow knife, and the name Hacienda Michopa from his great-great-great-grandmother's abrupt last letter, Jo Shelby strikes out for Mexico, traveling by various conveyances, having scrapes with the crooked arm of the law, meeting the people, and sleeping wherever he finds himself, as he follows the route of his namesake in search of the only family that he hopes against hope still remains.
