The middle daughter of struggling California fruit farmers, Alice Bush is accustomed to feeling inferior and destitute. But when her elder sister’s husband strikes a vein of gold in the Yukon Territory, Alice finally seizes control of her destiny by joining a wave of white settlers making the dangerous trek to the Klondike. By luck and circumstance, she becomes tightly intertwined in her sister and brother-in-law’s newfound fortune, as well as the beginning of a generations-long family quest for wealth. One hundred years later, in 2015, Alice’s great-great-granddaughter, Anna, must grapple with moral conflict and questions of justice as she travels to the Klondike to bequeath her would-be inheritance to the First Nations peoples who paid the price for its creation.

In a perfect life far into the future, wherein inhabitants of the underground settlement America-Five enjoy nearly eternal life and zero pain, workers in the Office of Mercy are compelled to eliminate the suffering of the nomadic tribes roaming outside…by tracking and killing them. Then one worker, 24-year-old Natasha, begins to doubt.