Will Toal has seen a lot of the world in his twenty-three years, including war, the death of his family, and the loss of everything he owns. The gold his father left him, buried in the family graveyard, provides hope for a new future. He is determined to leave Georgia and the past behind him, and start fresh in Carson Valley, at the base of the mountainous Sierra Nevada bowl cradling Lake Tahoe.
But here, Will comes up against a Goliath he never expected-Washington's support of San Francisco capital and influence to finish the transcontinental railroad as soon as possible. Big business is backed by national pride and unbelievable monetary gain, and this means driving the railroad construction through the upper reaches of Carson Valley-no matter whose land stands in their way.
Untenable right-of-way issues lead to a fierce gun battle between the railroad's hired guns and the Carson Valley ranchers based on the real-life 1880 events of Mussel Slough, California, just outside the city of Hanford.
Will and his fellow ranchers must try to survive the indomitable forces and insurmountable odds against them, fueled by more greed for power and money than they could ever have imagined. Can a compromise be reached in the completion of the grandest engineering effort the country has ever undertaken in its history, or will the ranchers and Will find themselves RAILROADED?