Bitter Passage opens on a rainy day in New York City during the bleak winter of 1849. Newspapers and broadsides shout the news that gold has been discovered in California. Americans respond predictably. Among the mob heading off in that epic American drama - the Gold Rush - are Frida, Hermann, and their three children. Frida's life has been a series of sad leave-takings, beginning ten years earlier in Prussia. When Hermann announces that he will leave New York to go to the fabled diggings, she determines to hold the family together by going too, taking their two teen-age sons and toddler daughter. It is a hard-fought trip, made more so by Hermann's belligerence and incompetence. Frida is our guide, our tragic guide.