An aging outlaw, seeking refuge from his violent past, seeks sanctuary in Big Sur, a “Refuge for Settlers and Outlaws” in post-Western California. But by 1906, the Western frontier has almost completely disappeared and wanted gunmen are a dead or hunted breed. William Manning seeks refuge from the law in the remote Bug Sur of California’s wild central coast and is forced by fate to become the “last of the otter hunters”—only to be challenged by violence and hardship to a destiny as the only man able to save them from extinction by his own kind.