"It is the winter of 1880, and the future looks promising for Annie and Nate Dawson. Nate's law practice is taking off. Annie has made the transition from pretend clairvoyant to a successful financial consultant. And they are looking forward to spending their first Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays together. For Robert Livingston, the owner San Francisco's newest grand emporium, the holidays don't look so promising. Not if he can't figure out...

In 1849, an Irish immigrant living in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains finds in the wreckage of a deadly stagecoach crash a letter with a photograph of a beautiful woman, and, moved by her written plea for help, journeys across the American frontier to the city of San Francisco at the height of the Gold Rush.