The history of California in the mid-19th century comes alive in this
captivating historical novel. Garnet Cameron, a fashionable young lady
of New York, is leading a neat, proper life, full of elegant parties and
polite young men, yet the prospect of actually marrying any of them
appalls her. Yearning for adventure, she instead marries Oliver Hale, a
wild trader who is about to cross the mountains and deserts to an
unheard-of land called California. During Garnet and Oliver's honeymoon
in New Orleans, she meets a dance-hall performer on the lam who calls
herself Florinda Grove and is also traveling to California. Along the
Jubilee Trail, Garnet and Florinda meet kinds of men never known to them
before, and together they make their painstaking way over the harsh
trail to Los Angeles, learning how to live without compromise and
discover both true friendship and true love.