Mark Lafitte, leader of a bumbled mutiny aboard a merchant ship lost in the Gulf of Mexico, is convinced that he is a dead man when he is marooned for his sins on the swampy wilderness shore of the French Louisiana Colony. That prediction nearly comes true multiple times during his years of slavery to an isolated Indian tribe, but somehow he survives. Eventually French traders rescue him and lead him back to a dangerous little settlement along the Mississippi River named New Orleans, which is destined to become the capital of the vast lands that France claims on the new western continent. Lafitte works relentlessly over the years to build a good life for himself and his ever-growing family, and battles alongside his fellow colonials for the survival of his new-world home. But the dark clouds of his past never forsake him, and eventually the time comes when he has no choice but to fight for what he believes in, and for his own life as well.