Children of the River

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.