Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine. Billy Gogan’s father has just died in a British
prison, and Billy has been cast from cousin Seamus’s house and forced to make his way to
America. Billy and his traveling companions, a destitute Irish peasant woman named Máire and
her daughter Fíona, endure the harsh passage to Gotham, America’s greatest city. Their ship
nearly founders during a great storm and later is forced to pick her way through a great forest of
icebergs.
Billy, Máire and Fíona eventually find a future together. But that future is taken in a
cruel stroke, and Billy must flee for his life. He finds refuge in the U.S. Army in Corpus Christi,
Texas on the eve of war with Mexico—or is it to be war with England and the hated Sassenagh
over the far-off Oregon territory?
But the Army is no safer than Gotham. Billy and his great friend, Hermann Wurster,
must battle to the death with their evil sergeant, Hoggs—as America hurtles into war with
Mexico; a war for which both countries are painfully unprepared.