In 1830 Ross Chesnut (White Eagle) leaves the Indians who raised him to follow his vision. In 1843 he marries a white woman in the Oregon Territory. In 1850 he loses his family to smallpox. In the spring of 1851, in BEYOND THE VISION, Ross heads east on the Oregon Trail with a young, half breed Indian woman who, like himself, is neither white, nor red. At Fort Laramie he is arrested for the murder of one of three men he agreed to guide to the fort and is released to Indian Agent Thomas Fitzpatrick on the pretext that Ross has agreed to be the agent for the Yanktonai tribe who raised him. With mixed emotions Ross takes on the job as agent. He is conflicted about the changes the treaty will bring and the greater conflicts his return to his Indian family will bring when he faces his life-long enemy in a power struggle to save his people and their culture in the face of the inevitable. At the same time, Ross faces a personal struggle to find a life and a family for himself between the forces threatening to destroy him.