When Effie Frost and her younger sister are made to accompany their spoiled cousin to California, she's certain life there will be unbearable. She dreams of going home to Boston and is determined to do that once Beatrice reunites with her husband in San Francisco. Once they arrive, they discover that Beatrice's husband is dead. Nearly penniless and stranded in a half-built city of almost all men, Effie devises a plan to find the gold herself. Murder, revenge, love, grief, and an overzealous vigilante committee and trial round this tale, during which the earliest days of the California Gold Rush are told by a young woman-the stubborn and resilient Effie Frost.