In 1873, an almost impossible mission was accomplished by an improbable posse of recruits. With little training and less experience, 150 men embarked upon a nine-hundred-mile march from civilized Toronto to a trading post at the heart of the wild frontier. Their goal: to penetrate Indian territory, stamp out nefarious whiskey trafficking, and bring order to a lawless land. What they encountered was horrifying and glorious in ways they could never have imagined.

Official histories of the march have been largely based on the writings of the first commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and are colored accordingly. David Cruise and Alison Griffiths present an entirely different perspective of this extraordinary event, using such primary sources as diaries and memoirs by the "Mounties" themselves, contemporary newspaper accounts, and other recently discovered materials.