Along the harsh north California coast the otter swam, enough to fill the Russian's trading ships with valuable pelts. So there they raised an outpost. But inland lay another land, a river wilderness where game and grizzly thrived. Into this wild land, stripped of his rank for marrying an Indian girl, Lieutenant Anton Rostov is cast. He is a man without a country, but still he is a man. He can hunt, trap, and conquer. And he discovers a power greater than his allegiance to a faraway Czar - the lure of a new world and the sweeping current of the Russian River.