Chandra and her husband enjoyed many idyllic years teaching at two one-room schools near Portland, Oregon. They've lived there with their daughter, Riona who was born in 1858. She knows her mother plunged through a wormhole from San Francisco of 2150 into the year 1850 of this parallel universe near the Oregon Trail in Southwest Wyoming. A computer chip, implanted at the base of Chandra's brain as a child and her futuristic smartsuit of special fibers helped her cope with the dangers of the Old West.
Riona spent her childhood summers in Fort Bridger with both her family and local Shoshones and became aware of the oncoming fate of Native Americans thanks to her mother. The fate of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce particularly affects her and she is determined to help them even though Chandra told her how difficult it is to influence changes over a pre-determined future.
Riona, her parents, their adopted Shoshone grandfather and a handsome reporter from a San Francisco newspaper travel by train and sea to find Chief Joseph and his people just before their conflict with and flight from the United States Army.
Do the Nez Perce allow them to come along or heed the warnings of Chandra, Sean and Riona? Come along as Chief Joseph and his people lead the United States Army on a long, torturous 1700-mile chase.