Jesse "Catch Me" Carter is possibly the most incompetent outlaw in the American West-his bank robberies end with buildings on fire, his train heists involve unexpected chickens, and his signature move is scrawling, "But you have to catch me!" on wanted posters for the authorities to find. Despite his catastrophic criminal technique, Jesse has accidentally become a folk hero in the frontier town of Oakhaven, celebrated in saloon songs and admired for his peculiar code of honor that has him sparing a widow's most precious possession-her late husband's watch-during a train robbery. Sheriff Amos Blackwell, a dedicated lawman with twenty-seven years of service, finds himself increasingly frustrated as his own town seems more entertained than outraged by Carter's theatrical crimes, with every attempt to form a posse ending in convenient excuses. Jesse's subsequent heists follow the same chaotic pattern: property damage that far exceeds the money stolen, accidental disasters, and a genuine decency that makes him dangerous only to his own plans.
Everything becomes infinitely more complicated when Caroline Blackwell returns from finishing school in San Francisco, bored with respectability and hungry for something interesting. She finds it in Jesse Carter-the charming disaster who robs banks badly, but treats people decently. Drawn to his defiant freedom and the genuine person beneath the criminal exterior, she begins meeting him in secret, sparking a romance that horrifies her father and scandalizes the town. When bounty hunters arrive in Oakhaven-including the ruthless Ebenezer Hicks who has no interest in bringing anyone in alive, and the pragmatic Bathsheba Shaw who prefers her targets breathing-the stakes escalate from amusing to deadly. Caroline must choose between the safe, respectable life her father envisions and the chaotic, passionate existence Jesse represents, while Jesse faces an impossible decision: continue running and risk the woman he loves, or surrender to a law that may show him no mercy-forcing everyone to confront what they truly value: the letter of the law, or the spirit of justice and mercy.
