From the decorous drawing rooms of the East to the dirty Gold Rush tent city of Hangtown with its tinderbox violence, Libby Grenville traveled in search of her husband Hugh who'd followed his dream to California. She was a woman alone with two small children among rough men with raw frontier ways.

Riverboat Gambler Gabe Foster laughed off her frosty Bostonian rebukes. But, as he saved her time and again from danger, their duel of wits ripened into a heart-hammering passion. Then came the news that Hugh was alive, in need of help - and Libby faced a cruel and difficult choice.