First in a 3-volume series following the Hargrave family from the banks of the Mississippi in the post-Civil War South across the United States in the great westward migration, and ending up in San Francisco, California (in vol. 3, The Fields Above the Sea.
Children of the River tells the tale of young Lucius Hargrave, bitten by wanderlust, who strikes out for a life on a Mississippi riverboat -- and soon confronts a world of gamblers, hucksters and con-men . . . and romance.