A young frontier photographer goes West to escape the Civil War draft and settles in the Bitterroot Mountains, ancestral home of the Nez Perce Indians. There he becomes obsessed with a young Irish pioneer woman. He comes to admire the Nez Perce and photographs the young leader, Chief Joseph, and a Nez Perce woman warrior. Their stories tangle in a ruthless convergence of fates. As he chronicles Chief Joseph's desperate struggle to save his people...

In Los Angeles, a German agent named Martin Browning is planning to kill FDR on the night he lights the National Christmas Tree. Who will stop him? Relentless FBI Agent Frank Carter? Kevin Cusack, a Hollywood script reader who also spies on the German Bund of Los Angeles, and becomes a suspect himself? Or Vivian Hopewell, the aspiring actress who signs on to play Martin Browning's wife and cannot help but fall in love with him? The clock is ticking....