Orphaned at thirteen, pioneer Joshua Sims joins a survey crew helping to build Michigan Road in order to pay for his family's northern Indiana homestead. When the surveyors' ink supply is accidentally lost in the Tippecanoe River, Sims is ordered to travel alone to Detroit, Michigan, to obtain more. Traveling by foot, boat, and horseback, Sims meets runaway slaves, Native Americans, canal builders, and other frontier figures as he journeys to Fort Wayne, across Lake Erie, and along the Sauk Trail in Michigan. Sims's encounters force him to re-evaluate his beliefs about the people in the rapidly changing land he now calls home.