Gold Rush California s notorious Legislature of a Thousand Drinks launches a secret consortium of frontier barons, triggering the collapse of independent mines throughout Sierra Nevada.

James MacLaren, a fugitive from Scotland, embarks on a new life in California, escaping his secrets but not his hatred for the upper class. He is a man always on his guard, leery of the entitled and wary of his own temper. While raising a beautiful, headstrong daughter, and denying his love for a woman he cannot have, he champions miners in their fight against the Coleridge Sierra speculators seeking to...