Ten years have passed since Michael Lewis made his first venture into Texas, now a province of Mexico. Together with a small number of Americans pioneering on the Brazos and Colorado Rivers, Michael and his brother Andrew each have a plot of land assigned to them by the entrepreneur Stephen F. Austin.
Michael Lewis has his fathers' wanderlust, Andrew is less footloose and excitable but the two act as one when trouble starts.

To secure their places in their new-found lands in Texas, the Lewis boys have to fight not only Mexican authorities and hostile Indians, but their own kind - renegade white men attempting to settle on Texas land without permission or authority.

InThe Raiders: Sons of Texas, Elmer Kelton continues his saga of the Lewis family and the formative years of Texas, ending this mid-volume of the trilogy with the birth of Michael's daughter and the marriage of Andrew to Petra Moreno, a girl from Nacogdoches with whom he has fallen in love.