One of those books that kicks off a "family coming to America" saga, exploring descendent generations as the series goes on, at least that's how I understand the genre. This being the first book in the series, it focuses on the founding father of the line and how he turns a chance opportunity - finding some old gold coins - into an enterprising adventure - going to America to trade goods for prized furs - and eventually decides that he likes the country enough that he would like to settle there permanently, establish a trade post, and explore the land.
This being a L'Amour novel, he also has a love interest (who shows up in the most improbable of circumstances of course) and numerous near death experiences. One thing about L'Amour's books is that it's never boring; he follows the rule of always putting his characters in conflict with an antagonistic force, be it human rival, minor character of passing interest, nature, or self.
My one major dislike was that there seemed to be a lot of pointed commentary that, while true from a historical standpoint as it led to the establishment and eventual separation of the colonies and founding of America and so on and so forth, pushed the Manifest Destiny philosophy to a distasteful degree IMHO.
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