Titus Bass drifts westward and is caught up in the powerful currents of the Mississippi River. From Louisville past the Chickasaw bluffs and the Natchez Trace all the way to New Orleans, he plunges into the rough-and-tumble life along the great river's banks: a volatile, violent country of riverboatmen and river bandits, knife fights and Indian raids, strong liquor and stronger women. But even as he works his way back upriver along the bustling wharves of St. Louis, Titus feels destiny beckoning him to plunge into an even wilder, more vast frontier. Beyond St. Louis stretches the lonely, unexplored expanse of the Great Plains, and it is here that Titus Bass will set his sights. Like America itself, Titus looks west and sees the future ... and he's willing to risk everything to seize it.