When William Sydney Porter faces prison for embezzlement in Austin, Texas, he catches the first tramp steamer to Central America. The year is 1905. He washes up in the town of Coralio, in a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S. and a government at the mercy of American scoundrels, drunks, and robber-barons. Porter establishes himself as a newspaper printer, despite violent opposition from the most powerful individual in the country—Walter Whitaker, the president of the Vesuvius Fruit Company. Whitaker sees Porter’s newspaper as a threat to his plans to overthrow the government and install a puppet who will give him concessions to build a railroad to the new Panama Canal.