LAND OF THE FREE

Forty years of tax and spend government, the people's faith degraded, severe depression and inflation, Wall Street and the stock markets collapsed totally, the dollar was virtually worthless and the American economy was basically reduced to a barter system.

The federal government attempted to maintain control of the situation by nationalizing the majority of the nation's infrastructure and industry. The Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights became meaningless. These actions resulted in widespread civil revolt. Rioting due to food shortages in every metropolitan area, electrical blackouts, and extreme shortages of all basic commodities, plunged the nation into total pandemonium. Full-scale civil war breaks out between the eastern "Federalist" states and the newly formed alliances. The U.S. military, a shadow of its former self and divided closely among the four opponents, resulted in a drawn out affair. After a year and a half, the battle lines were drawn roughly along the Rocky Mountains.

Not surprisingly, remote rural pockets of farms and ranches, "common folk" use to being left alone, were the portions of society thus far least affected by these events. Their relative reprieve was to be short lived due to degradation of civil rights and basic human nature. Corrupt men in local government, coveting their ranches and farms, moved to take them by any manner. The nationwide chaos created a vacuum of power filled by opportunists who would stop at nothing.

The Dunbars, a second-generation ranching family in the Northwest Cascades, and their neighbors are drawn into a life and death struggle. Fighting to meet their day to day needs, Stan Dunbar's family find themselves out maneuvered by local authorities using a rustling incident as excuse to confiscate their ranch. In a Nation torn, this clash reflects a turning point in our Land of the Free.