Silver St. Ives, torn from her brother and the Palmyra plantation in upcountry Georgia, is forced by her husband to cross the mosquito riddled Isthmus in Panama to reach the gold that beckons in California. Four hundred miles from San Francisco, Xavier St. Ives dies and she learns to chart her own course to a rain swept Oregon Territory. But the Territory is dominated by tall fir trees and dripping ferns and an old love, a love who doesn't believe she's changed from the girl who lied to him ten years before. Silver fights to establish a sawmill on the banks of the Double Back River, but resists help from the Ardent community. Friends like Rye and Felicity Jones are rare in the new country, and Silver, determined to live on her own, struggles to let the warmth of friendship enter her life. When Ransome Jones begins to court Silver, Cade Braedon feels the pull of emotions he thought lost long ago in Savannah. The former Hudson Bay trapper begins to hope. Perhaps Silver has changed ... perhaps he can trust her with his heart once more.