For Joyous, her childhood is shattered when she is kidnapped and then abandoned. Never knowing her true identity, she grows up amid the California Gold Rush as the adopted daughter of Agnus McFarlane, a lovable prospector. Brit O'Donnell escapes the potato famine in Ireland to find a better life in Monterey, California. The Silver Rush will test the mettle of this determined young man. The son of a Castilian patrician whose fortune was absconded, fifteen-year-old Carlos Montoya also ventures to California with dreams of silver. Three seemingly separate lives, three undetermined destinies...to be brought together by the hand of God in the unforgiving California desert.