Defying his Catholic parents’ insistence that he join the clergy, twenty-year-old R. M. Probstfield emigrates from the Rhineland to Minnesota. After some continental rambling and the federal government forcing Native Americans from the Red River Valley, a decade toiling for the Hudson’s Bay Company persuades him that the Valley’s rich soil offers opportunity, and as one of the earliest settlers establishes Oakport Farm near the well-timbered Red River.