"In the badlands of the North American West in the late 1800s, a young woman, Miette, embarks on a quest to find the mother who abandoned her: the notorious Calamity Jane. Miette knows Jane only as an infamous soldier, drinker and exhibition shooter, but she sets out nonetheless across a landscape peopled with madwomen, thieves, minstrels and ghosts, each of them adding to the story of her famous mother."--Inside front cover.