Peter O'Malley is a young eighteen-year-old Irishman who lives on the outskirts of Limerick during the potato famine in Ireland. His family had many struggles, and being evicted by an absentee landlord was just one of them. The night before his family was to leave their three-hundred-year-old ancestral cottage, his parents were murdered. Being the last of his Irish clan, his anguish, torment, and pain is unbearable as he lashes out and burns the family cottage.

Before leaving their land, he surveys the burned cottage and finds a leather pouch with a letter dating back to the sixteenth century speaking of gold and hidden treasures. Several lords try to murder him, but God has different plans for Peter. Divine intervention saves his life, and Peter is ordered to leave the island and tossed a gold Knight Templars coin. He travels to Cork and inadvertently saves the life of Captain Doyle, owner of a brigantine ship known as The Trinity. The captain convinces Peter to sail with him to London and then to America.

During that short layover, he is apprehended by the Queen of England's guards outside Westminster Chapter House and is brought before Queen Victoria. She sends him on an errand that nearly costs him his life. He makes his way back to The Trinity, and they sail for America, only to be forced to flee north to Canada by a hurricane. Peter meets the love of his life, Kimberly O'Leary, at Duggal's Irish pub and finds a job as a blacksmith, but typhus fever is rampant and eventually forces them into the vast Canadian wilderness. They want to trap and sell beaver the following year, but they accidently discover gold; it alters their plans, but not God's plan. He will have the final word.