Marty McKidrict and Stuart Brodie are outcasts in the turbulent colonial backcountry of the 1780s. Trying to escape a brutal, sadistic husband, McKidrict disguises herself as a man and reluctantly joins the Patriot cause led by John Sevier and the Overmountain Men. Meanwhile, Brodie, a freedman, joins the Loyalists after Brodie's brother is lynched by a gang of Patriot renegades. In the heat of the American Revolution, fate will bring the two together in a bloody climax on a ridge along the border of the Carolinas, a place that will go down in history as King's Mountain.