Summer, 1903. Widowed Rough Rider Dade Wyatt longs to cast off his shadowed past and retreat to a quiet life as a security operative for his old friend, paper tycoon Warren Dodge. But Dodges plans to host Wyatts old commander Teddy Roosevelt on an idyllic Vermont island, and to advance his own political ambitions, are imperiled by the sudden death of a guest. With help from an enigmatic Creole, a bluff Scots police inspector, and a Vermont farm girl on the cusp of womanhood, Wyatt descends into a maelstrom of poverty, anarchy, and class war to safeguard the President and catch a killer.