Caleb Gibbons is handed a Chinese baby after the Chinese father is killed at a gold mining camp on the river. Caleb and his wife Ruth Anne raise the Chinese boy for 12 years until a Chinese woman arrives and claims she is the child's mother.

Set in the early 1860s, outside of Sacramento, the Gibbons live in an isolated California Gold Rush mining town. The Chinese baby is near death and Ruth Anne, who is new to California, ventures to an Indian village to find a mother who can nurse the child back to health.

Over the next decade, Caleb and Ruth Anne care for the Chinese boy as their own son. Ruth Anne encounters prejudice and support in her small town on the river while caring for the Chinese boy.

When the Chinese boy is taken from her and given to the Chinese woman, who claims to be the mother, Ruth Anne spirals into suicidal depression. A smart and ingenious boy, he finds a way to escape back to his home with Caleb and Ruth Anne.

His return is only temporary as the sheriff returns and takes the Chinese boy back to Sacramento to live with the Chinese woman. Ruth Anne travels to Sacramento and works with an old acquaintance to secrete the boy onto a train to San Francisco and a safe environment.

Because Caleb and Ruth Anne fear the boy’s location may be found out by the Chinese woman, they never try to communicate with him. The Chinese boy, now a grown man, finds his way back to gold mining region to reunite with Caleb and Ruth Anne.

Unfortunately, Caleb has died, and Ruth Anne is a very different woman. While the characters are fictitious, the story incorporates many historical events of 19th century California including railroads, wire rope suspension bridges, water projects, and anti-Chinese mobs who attacked Chinese miners.

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