In 1830s squalid London, young Samuel Stack has great expectations when given work at the prestigious antiquities firm of Folk & Finch. But things there aren’t what they seem and when Sam is inadvertently caught up in a fraud scandal he and his family are forced to flee to Australia under assumed names. Arriving in New South Wales in the company of the enigmatic Martin Rammage, Sam finds his freedom again threatened when a betrayal exposes his identity and past. With little choice, he is once more on the run, this time to the Port Phillip district where he begins working for the irascible Captain Wesley James on his sheep station. James’ station sits on the frontier of volatile relations between workers and boss, between convicts and free men, and especially between the new settlers and the land’s Aboriginal people. And as tensions there escalate Sam finds himself ensnared in a horrific act of frontier violence, an event that will change him forever.