It is 1754 as Jamie Graham journeys home from wintering in the lands of Six Nations with his father and a family friend. When they walk into a dimly lit trading post one day, Jamie has no idea that an unintended collision with an English captain, Lord Mowbray, will have repercussions far beyond what he ever imagined. As he is swept along on this pilgrimage into manhood, Jamie is taken from the social circles of Philadelphia to the western reaches of the frontier where he goes in search of the children taken captive by an Abenaki war party. As he is reluctantly drawn into the first major campaign of the war with the French, Jamie finds himself in the thick of the fighting on Braddock's Road, experiencing firsthand England's devastating defeat in the opening stages of the French and Indian war. When his journey reaches its climactic resolution in a small cabin near where his pilgrimage began, Jamie must face one final confrontation with Mowbray where both love and justice hang in the balance. In this coming-of-age story set during the tumultuous beginning of the French and Indian war, a young man is confronted with the reality of good and evil, and the confusing emotions associated with a budding romance.