A dead search-and-rescue team member, a missing friend, an unexplained illness at a local water-bottling plant that sends workers to the hospital and sets off biohazard warnings may have something in common as Sun Valley sheriff Walt Fleming follows threads of questionable evidence through the glitter of Sun Valley to expose a masterfully planned domestic terrorist attack.

Danny Wright, seventeen, joined the Idaho Army National Guard to serve the country as his father had, but when the Guard is sent to an anti-government protest in Boise and Danny's gun accidently fires, he finds himself at the center of a conflict that results in the federal government declaring war on Idaho.

Danny Wright is considered to be a hero by many in the rebel held area of Idaho and the Northwest, but he has little faith in what passes for a government there, or in the secretive and repressive Brotherhood--and when nuclear weapons are detonated in Washington, D.C. and New York, the Civil War suddenly turns into World War III.