As the first book of the trilogy opens, it is early spring in 1811 and the Holt family is getting together for a reunion at the family homestead near Marietta, Ohio. Among the family members gathered for the joyous occasion are frontiersman Clay Holt, who has come all the way from the Rocky Mountains with his Teton Sioux wife and their young ward; and Jefferson Holt, Clay's brother, who has come from Wilmington, North Carolina with his wife and son. The festivities are interrupted, however, when Clay receives a letter signed by Merriwether Lewis informing him that he has been awarded a land grant in return for his services on the Lewis and Clark expedition several years earlier. Aware that Lewis, his former captain on the expedition to the Pacific, has recently died under mysterious circumstances, Clay finally decides to travel to Washington to investigate the matter. Upon arrival, both Clay and Jeff are approached by none other than President Thomas Jefferson, who enlists their aid in uncovering a conspiracy to illegally acquire land in the western territories. Jefferson believes that Merriwether Lewis had discovered such a scheme and was murdered for it. Soon, Clay and Jeff find themselves at the heart of a deadly quest that separates them from their families and leads them from the manors of Virginia to a fateful steamboat voyage down the Mississippi.

They are bold men and women who chase their dream from the cities of the East to the wild vastness of the West. Daring and determined, they seek their fortune in a rough-and-tumble new land, forging their destiny along with that of the great American continent. A raw young nation needs foreign commerce to survive, so Jefferson Holt stakes the future of his company on blazing trade routes to the Pacific. He sends his cousin Ned to an isolated land of great riches, while he himself journeys to Russian Alaska. Meanwhile, Clay Holt continues his undercover efforts to unmask the powerful Washington politician who is plotting against his own country. But each of the Holts soon finds himself in deadly Jeff in the snows of Alaska, Ned on the rough Pacific seas, and Clay in a wilderness rent by nature’s fury. To fulfill their destiny—and to build their nation’s future—the Holts must battle for their lives, and their freedom.

Clay Holt and Lieutenant John Markham learn of a French plot to re-establish an empire on American soil and head North into the wilderness to put a stop to it.