California, 1877

Frenchwoman Catherine Bourchier flees an abusive husband and risks everything on a vineyard in far-off America.

In the smouldering powder keg of San Francisco, Chi-en Shambles is exiled from his own Chinatown community. Can his extraordinary talents and natural decency win acceptance and love where a man is measured a by dollars, ignorance and prejudice?

An unlikely alliance offers each damaged outcast a final chance in the ‘New Eden’ of Napa Valley. But the past and its ghosts are never truly dead. And the dust of the earth never settles. Sometimes both come knocking at your door.