History tells us Theodore Roosevelt was a force of nature. It doesn't tell us about the time nature almost broke him.

In 1893, the future President published The Wilderness Hunter, including a chilling, factual account of a "goblin-beast" that stalked a trapper named Bauman. Historians dismiss it as a campfire tale.

They are wrong.

Dakota Territory, 1886. Two years after the death of his wife, a grief-hardened Theodore Roosevelt is serving as a Deputy Sheriff in the badlands. When a prospector is found with his neck wrung like a chicken and his camp destroyed by a beast walking on two legs, Roosevelt sees a challenge. He organizes an expedition into the unmapped, suffocating silence of the Wisdom Pass to kill the creature and restore order to the frontier.

But the thing waiting in the black timber is not a bear.

It doesn't just kill; it dismantles. It doesn't just roar; it mimics the voices of the dead. And it isn't protecting territory—it is protecting a secret that could shatter the scientific world.

Stranded in a box canyon with a broken guide, a fatalistic scout, and an arrogant scientist, Roosevelt is stripped of his wealth, his station, and his weapons. As the hunter becomes the prey, the future President must shed his civilization and become something primal to survive.