Kevin Furmage was a visionary... a man whose burning obsession was to make a mark upon the world. When he heard the rumour of a new mountain route, and acquired a hand-drawn map, to the fertile land of California, he became determined to be the first man to lead a group of pioneers along the trail.

In the wagon train was a strange and ill-assorted group of people. Madame Jurer with her painted wagon full of girls; Dave Glenny, self-willed, brutal and terrorising his wife and child; Ben and Mahitabel Smith, honest and God-fearing, with a pretty eighteen-year-old daughter who was expected to behave like a woman and think like a child.

These were the people faced not only with appalling hardship but also with the problem of living with one another on an untried route with the ferocious cold of a Rocky Mountain winter to endure.