The Weight of Dreams — Jonis Agee

At seventeen, Ty Bonte has already learned some of life's harshest lessons. Abandoned by his mother after the accidental death of his beloved younger brother, Ty spends his days working on the family ranch with his violent, sadistic father and his nights marauding with his mean-spirited drinking buddy, Harney Rivers. When a drunken fight escalates into the near-death of a young Indian, Ty flees his Nebraska home with an arrest warrant hanging over his head.

Twenty-two years later, Ty is a horse trainer and trader in Kansas, sharing his life and his love of horses with Dakota, a young woman with secrets of her own. Their comfortable existence is shattered by a visit from Harney, who commits an act of brutality that forces Ty to face up to his own violent past. On a quest for retribution, Ty returns to Nebraska and finds his dying father, as abusive as ever, fighting the bank's imminent foreclosure on the ranch and his mother with her own vengeful agenda. In an explosive courtroom confrontation with Harney, Ty finally comes to terms with the ghosts of his childhood and in the process is able to forgive himself and his family.