When a fourteen-year-old boy travels to San Francisco after leaving his father's run-down, failing farm in Las Cruces, New Mexico, he is shanghaied and flogged for insubordination. Young Bill Bronson has to grow up quickly to survive spending many months at sea before finally making it back to the US, where he works as a stagecoach driver and serves in the 1st California Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Bill falls in love with an Indian princess and marries her. Despite the interference of bigots, he builds a homestead in Tulare County, California, where he explores the history of Farmersville and Linnell Camp. The search for a missing child links local white and Indian families, bringing them all closer together in a time when California Indians are considered less than human. Treacherous Journey is a riveting novel of optimism, morals, principles, and perseverance.