"Frank Grigware, in 1909, was sentenced to life in Leavenworth, the first federal penitentiary, for a crime he didn't commit. He escaped when he joined five convicts in hijacking a supply train and ramming through the joint's west gate. For the next twenty-four years, Frank Grigware, America's most elusive fugitive, ran from the law. Joe Jackson begins Grigware's story in the waning days of the Old West.

The Pinkertons and the hard hand of federal law have corralled most of the region's fabled desperadoes, but the whole country remains drunk on tales of blood and destiny. Fed by the vanishing frontier's legends, Grigware sets out to find gold in the Idaho mountains, only to be confronted by harsh realities. Taken in by a crew of train robbers, the guileless Grigware finds himself a target of an investigation for a crime he had no hand in. Grigware's flight takes him across the American plains and the Canadian border to a new life as a husband, father, and mayor of a small town. Tracked doggedly by J.

Edgar Hoover and the FBI through the 1920s and '30s, Grigware is ultimately arrested by Mounties in Jasper, Alberta - and becomes the focus of an international incident.

A true story of a daring Western fugitive and a revealing examination of the qualities of justice in two neighboring nations, Jackson's book lays bare a war against crime that ends with a surprising twist, as justice proves to be capricious, the servant of time and place and ambition, yet tempered by the mercy of women and men."--BOOK JACKET.