Going Home: It is 1832, six years after he deserted the Royal Navy, when Barnaby Skye has a chance to return to England to clear his name and take up employment with the Hudson's Bay Company. With his devoted Crow wife, Victoria, an eccentric botanist named Alistair Nutmeg, and a strange pariah dog following along, Skye makes his way west to begin his journey home. But Skye is as much a magnet for trouble as he is a legend among mountain men. The legendary frontiersman fights Mexican bandits, murderous Pacific coastal Indians, thirst, starvation, and despair as he learns where home really is and what honor really means.

Downriver: In the summer of 1838, the beaver-trapping business is dying out. When Barnaby Skye is offered a chance to become a post trader in his Crow wife's homeland, he makes the journey to St. Louis to present himself as a candidate for the job to the mighty managers of the Upper Missouri Outfit. The 2,000-mile voyage down the Missouri River steamboat Otter offers dangers at every turn--but the real danger lies in another passenger on the paddlewheel steamer, the Creole fur brigade leader Alexandre Bonfils. This nefarious man is a rival for the job Skye is seeking and is determined to be the only candidate by the time the Otter reaches the city.