When you are the second or third son of an established family in England in the early 1600's, it is often best to strike out on your own and make your own fortune.

And this is what John Savage did, sailing to colonial Virginia with only a letter of introduction as a bookkeeper to a tobacco planter. The attractive daughter of the planter (Susannah) shared in the perils of the sea voyage, and it is she that commends John to her father. So John gains employment, not as a bookkeeper, but as a sweating worker in the tobacco fields.

It is a tumultuous year. John learns the tobacco trade literally from the ground up. It is a trade that depends upon the sweat of indentured workers and early slaves from the African slave trade.

However, it is his bookkeeping skills that finally uncovers financial dishonesties by the Jamestown governor which endangers the future of the Rolfson plantation, and John's life.

John also grits his teeth as local dandies pay court to the desirable Susannah. It is his social impertinences that lead him to several duels.

Amid this turmoil, John has the chance to return to mother England in charge of the family fortunes. Will he stick to his challenging new life, or will he take the assured comforts of his former life?