Sometimes wanderlust skips a generation... but when it strikes, it strikes gold.

In 1852, fourteen-year-old Jeremy Ash rises to his grandfather's challenge and sets out on the adventure of a lifetime – the California Trail.

It's four deadly months and 1,600 merciless miles from the Missouri River to the goldfields of the Sierra Nevada. There's alkali water that'll poison you; desert heat that'll fry your brains; mountain passes that'll crush you; swarms of biting insects that'll drive you mad; deadly diseases that'll plague you; and warrior tribes that may make it lethally clear they don't want you there.

Will the California Trail kill Jeremy, like so many others before him? Or will it make a man out of him?