In the rough-and-tumble Portland of the 1860s, a young steamboat captain navigates treacherous waters both on the Columbia River and in the parlors of frontier society. He is a man of action and ambition, running his paddle-wheeler through the gorge while building a future in a town where fortunes rise and fall with each season's trade.

She is a beautiful woman from the wrong side of respectability, her drunken father a burden and her reputation shadowed by circumstance. Yet she possesses a spirit as fierce as the storms that sweep down the river, and a directness that cuts through the pretensions of Portland's aspiring elite.

Between them stands the rigid class divide of a frontier society still finding its footing-and the powerful men and polished women who would keep them apart. As political schemes and personal vendettas threaten everything he has built, he must choose between the safe path to prosperity and the woman who has claimed his heart.