Beginning in the savage wilds of Colorado in the waning days of the fur trade, the story follows Zebulon Shook, a mountain man who has a curse placed on him by a mysterious Native American woman whose lover he murdered, to "drift like a blind man between the worlds, not knowing if you're dead or alive, or if the unseen world exists, or if you're dreaming." Zebulon sets out on the trail from Colorado, venturing to the remote reaches of the Northwest, a journey that traverses the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields, bringing him face to face with mystics and outlaws, politically-minded prison wardens and Russian Counts, each hungry to stake their claim on the American dream.
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