John and Mary Kate O'Malley have a simple dream of making an honest living and rising above the grinding poverty of their beloved home country, Ireland. Rev. Jasper Constable brings his family to Oregon with loftier motives -- to bring God to the natives -- and is as unaccustomed to physical labor as he is to disillusionment. Abel Brownell has been lucky all his life, making money with no effort and hoping to make a fortune out West with his gift of gab and carefree manner. And Garwood Reese's dream is the most ambitious of all: to convince others that he is the man who will eject the British and their French-Canadian cohorts and establish American hegemony in the Northwest.

The man who both aids and stands in the way of this party of dreamers is the "White Eagle" of the Oregon country, Doctor John McLoughlin, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, torn by his allegiance to the British Crown he represents and his innate sympathy toward the starving emigrants struggling into his domain.