William Sterner is seeking the better life but makes mistakes along his way. The novel begins in Pennsylvania in the late 1700s, in a place called Nockamixon by the Lenape, meaning Land of Three Houses. He elopes with the daughter of a wealthy British sympathizer, Mary Bartholomew, and they run away to start a flour mill on the Wissahickon River near Philadelphia. Their mill is a success; William buys a ship, filling the hold with 800 barrels of Pennsylvania...