Left suddenly penniless, the Honorable Sophia Grafton, a viscount's orphaned daughter, sails to the New World to claim the only property left to her name: a tobacco plantation in the remote wilds of colonial Virginia. Enlisting the reluctant assistance of a handsome young French spy--at gunpoint--she gathers an unlikely group of escaped slaves and indentured servants, each seeking their own safe haven in the untamed New World. What follows will test her courage and that of her companions as they struggle to survive a journey deep into a hostile wilderness and eventually forge a community of homesteads and deep bonds that will unite them for generations. The first installment in an epic historical trilogy.