A fictionalized account of the arrival in Marin County of the Short-Meriner family in 1846. The family became prominent Marin pioneers and once owned much of San Rafael and San Anselmo. Jane Meriner, a 37-year-old widow, her sons by her first marriage, J. O. B. and Jacob Short, and her daughters by her second husband, Elizabeth and Catherine Meriner, drove their covered wagon along the California Trail from Missouri to the Sacramento Valley. Since there are many accounts of the California Trail, this account describes only the final part of their journey, from the end of the Trail at Johnson's Rancho in Yolo County to the San Rafael Mission.