Ray turns to Karen, looks her in the eyes. “I knew I was killing him, I could have stopped, but I just kept on hitting him. I wanted him to feel what my mother had felt all those years...”

When writer Ray Givens mysteriously inherits a beautiful old Montana farmhouse it seems the perfect place to escape his violent past.

As Ray and his young family settle in, he starts trying to discover why a ninety year old lady left the farmhouse to Ray’s dead father.

But when Ray discovers some loggers illegally clear-cutting his land, the idyllic landscape suddenly becomes an altogether more threatening environment.

The loggers brutally beat Ray, but when he reports it to the sheriff, the sheriff tells Ray to let it go. Ray refuses to back off, and things quickly escalate – first Ray’s barn is burned down, then his family threatened.

Ray knows who’s responsible – the Johnson family. Three wild sons and a brutal father, Old Man Johnson, scrapping to keep their saw mill open whatever it takes.

Finally, they kidnap Ray, his wife and daughter. Ray kills two of the brothers and rescues his family, and escapes to his house to await the old man and the surviving brother.

A Long Cold Winter is a thriller as chilling as a harsh Montana winter, for in the darkened house Ray will encounter his darkest fear, and discover a secret that could tear his life apart.