Blackbelly is a contemporary western that suspensefully traces the consequences of a crime of bigotry. It is the story of an unjustly accused sheep rancher's struggle to reclaim his life, and that of a woman close to him, from perils imposed by a domineering father and the culture of a remote Idaho town. The author, a forester's daughter raised in Idaho and Montana, conveys an authentic sense of place, with the gritty but proudly independent community of Sweetwater a prominent part of the story.