A rousing and heart-pounding tale rich with historical detail, about two half-brothers, Reuben and Thaddeus Flack, who set out to deliver a flatboat full of local Kentucky goods to the market in New Orleans in the new Louisiana Territory in 1814. It is a time when the nation was young, life was anything but easy and the West extended little beyond the Mississippi River. Along the way they encounter river rats and thieves, loose women and "fire-'n-brimstone" preachers, dangerous rapids and drenching storms, making one narrow escape after another. Younger brother Thad, who has lived his life in the shadow of his older brother, is thrown, ill prepared, into the riverman's rough world where his journey becomes his passage into manhood, with a little help from Effie. Unwittingly the brothers stumble into New Orleans just in time to be unwilling participants in the historic battle.