Christmastime, 1913: Grace Knight's elegant hotel in Cuernavaca is the place to see and be seen. Mexico's native and foreign luminaries flock there to dance to the new beat of ragtime under the ballroom's twinkling electric lights.

Outside the city, violence is looming. Federal soldiers raid the hacienda of Don Miguel Sanchez, hunting for followers of the charismatic rebel, Emiliano Zapata. In a hailstorm of rifle fire, sixteen-year-old Angela Sanchez's life changes forever. She takes her father's Winchester carbine, gathers the survivors, and rides off to join Zapata's army.

Grace and Angela are two very different women. But both will do anything to protect the people-and the country-that they love as they are swept up in a Revolution that almost destroys them.