A sweeping, multi-layered novel based on the US government's decision to open more routes to California during the Gold Rush. To help navigate this waterless, largely unexplored territory, the War Department imported seventy-five camels to help traverse the brutal terrain that was murderous on other livestock.
When Sophia Hughes meets Geoffrey Scott in St. Thomas, a scrap of inhospitable desert in the Utah Territory, she is torn between her attraction for the stranger, her fidelity as a polygamist wife, and her unresolved feelings for the man who abandoned her.
