When her mother dies, fourteen-year-old Angel has no one to turn to but Dalt, a gruff-spoken mountain man with an unsettling leer and a dark past. Angel follows Dalt to the boomtowns of the Colorado territory, where she is thrust into the hardscrabble world of dancehalls, mining camps, and saloons.

From gold mines to gambling palaces, Angel tells the story of a girl navigating her way through life, as an orphan, a pioneer, and ultimately a miner's wife and respected madam . . . a story bound up with the tale of the one man in all the West who dared to love her.