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Unlike other accounts set in British Columbia, this literary history privileges non-European perspectives and celebrates the complex alliances among Chinese, First Nations, Blacks, Hawaiians, Mexicans, and women. Tew Kin, a young imperial scholar discontent with his staid, privileged life, leaves mid-nineteenth century China and his prosperous family and arrives in gold-crazed San Francisco. Based upon its auspicious-sounding name, he makes his way to Fort Hope, in the soon-to-be Colony of British Columbia. Befriended by a Sto:lo youth, his clan and a Black saloon keep, suspicions of murder force Tew Kin to flee rather than test the bonds of friendship and frontier justice. His salvation begins in a diverse company of mule train drivers, along with their mixed families, and wends its course from Langley to Barkerville and through three generations to Victoria before a truth and a reconciliation are fully realized.