The story in The Door That Faced West is a little known history that takes place in the American South as the 18th century ends and the 19th century begins. At the time the western frontier still occupied territory east of the Mississippi. It is a serial killer story that it is based on actual events. Although a character-driven fiction novel, it is also something like a true-crime book. Being from the POV of a young female character, it provides some education about the limitations on women's rights of the time. The story is an early Western, distinguished from traditional Westerns by the technology of the period. At the time firearms were single-shot weapons, and hand-to-hand combat was much more common.

In the beginning of the 19th century, the two murderous Harpe brothers (pronounced Harp), loyal to one another but violently at odds, go on a yearlong killing spree in the American frontier, dragging with them the three wives they share between them - women who form a triangle of dependency, loyalty, jealousy, hatred, betrayal, and love.

The Harpes are often considered America's first serial killers. They were land pirates who prowled the wilderness of Tennessee and Kentucky looking for victims. The story unfolds from the point of view of the brothers' third wife, Sadie Rice, a 16-year-old daughter of a minister. As she endures life on the trail in their company, she benefits from the Harpes' ability to defend their own with extreme violence. The deeper into the savage wilderness they travel, the more dependent upon the brothers she becomes. Too late she realizes that their capacity for violence is, in truth, a ravenous hunger.