Set in San Francisco and Sacramento, this is the story of America's first Transcontinenal Railroad. The players are The Central Pacific, The Big Four and the tens of thousands who built the roads, laid the rails, drove the spikes and crossed the Sierra Nevada into Utaha task everyone said was impossible. In 1865, newlywed Ian Hamilton leaves the North of England for California where his uncle, Geddes MacCallum, consulting engineer to the Central Pacific Railroad, has offers him a job. Wife Gwen is to follow when their child is born. Though Gwen is reluctant, she makes the trip with her cousins, the Marsdens. En route they endure unspeakable ordeals. Once in San Francisco, Gwen sees little of Ian. He is following his passionswherever the railroad is being built, over vast mountain ranges, across desert wastes and, soon, into the arms of Mai Ping, the beautiful daughter of MacCallum's closest confidant, Feng Li. Though Gwen nows nothing specific, she senses trouble. Engineer MacCallum is unwillingly complicit with Ian's deception because he will allow nothing to interfere with the completion of the railroad. Gwen pits her will against Ian's infatuation with hauling the railroad to its final destination. She is further distressed as she observes the life of her cousin, Dolly Marsden, who appears to achieve everything that eludes Gwen at every turn. As she sees it, the blame for all her anguish and uncertainty lies with her rival for Ian's affection, the railroad. She remains entirely ignorant of his affair with Mai Ping. Torn between the two women, Ian is like a leaf in a Spring freshet, whirled about by eddies over which he seems to have no control. His work on the Central Pacific is his only refuge from the increasing confusion of his personal life. Certainly, a major role in the drama is played by the railroad itself. At the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln realized how important a transcontinental railroad would be in str