The year is 1832. Twenty-year-old Jacob Hart, against all advice, is leaving his Vermont home to strike out into the American frontier to begin a new life. His journey leads him into the wilderness of the Michigan Territory. There he faces toil, danger, and death. But he also eventually finds common cause and the joys that come from hard-earned friendships and family.

On his twentieth birthday, eldest son Jacob Hart fulfills his secret ambition of departing his family's hardscrabble Vermont farm to create a new life on what he hopes are the more fertile lands of the American frontier. The move left him utterly alone, with his childhood home and family forever out of his life. The year is 1832, and America is changing rapidly. Dreams come hard in the wilderness, however. Death and danger are ever present, and every action requires careful thought, as well as accepting the vagaries of fate and of powers beyond one man's control. In the unbroken wilderness he carves out a farm, and for the next thirty years plays a major role in the journey that he and his neighbors are on, as well as the journey that America herself is making in that epochal period of our history. Jacob finds that being at the forefront of history comes at a high cost but also can have great rewards. In the end, he finds that when one generation's role is ending, it is just beginning for the next. Life goes on and journeys continue. Time passes and circumstances change, but aspirations for a life that fulfills the desires of the dreamer continue unabated.