The Belmont's, an old established Jewish family, had money, status, and power in the early 19th century. Their first son, Jeremiah (J), is born just when the slavery issue is beginning to gain critical mass. He is raised in a protected and loving environment. However, due to bouts of adolescent psoriasis, he spends a lot of time alone, thinking and reading. The disparity he sees between the haves and the have-nots deeply affects him. He becomes quite introspective. In his young adult years he nurtures three, deep friendships that serve to keep him from total despair. It becomes clear to his friends that above all, he must find the deeper meanings in life.
J and his friends are an intimate foursome: Lamentations Fosselman (Lam), the son of his parent's friends; William Dodd (Bill), a grade school playmate, and Sophie Namath, a dark beauty all three men pursue beyond simple friendship and with different motives. Sophie enjoys engaging in an affectionate yet cunning juggling act to remain the center of attention with each of them. Despite all his friends' protestations, J slowly withdraws from the group to pursue his quest. He drops out of law school and begins to make plans to become a trapper or a gold miner. To the horror of his friends and family---what looks like an act of abandonment from his Jewish roots---J becomes a Quaker.
J's wilderness journey is an exciting period in his life. The highlights: an entire winter alone in the Rockies; a death-defying meeting with a savage native tribe; mysterious sightings of a donkey-man; surviving a flash flood that exposes the bones of a monster; finding Mt. Perspective and the land he will homestead. Correspondence between J and a long-lost childhood love, Rachel, leads to a frontier marriage. After many failed crops, their salvation arrives over the years in the form of a runaway slave, an outcast Indian and an escaped Chinese rail worker. They all help J become a wealthy man. J & Rachel eventually raise a family of 7 sons and 3 daughters. Bitter rivalries erupt between J and neighboring cattlemen, warring native tribes and the politics surrounding the transcontinental railway. In one earth-shaking day, J loses all his adult children and their wives, (except for 10 grandchildren), to a tornado, all his stock to revengeful Indian tribes and his ranch/farm to a fire set by renegade cattlemen.
J's old friends, Lam, Bill and Sophie, hear of the disaster that has struck J, put away old hurts, reunite and make their way to the shattered homestead. Their comfort turns to accusation, accusation to outright anger. Finally, everyone deserts him and flees as a tornado tears its way straight at them. J remains behind, content to die. The tornado miraculously stops, rises off the ground and comes back down over J. In the eye of the tornado, J meets God who delivers an unexpected answer to the questions he has been seeking all his life. J's possessions and friends are all restored to him. J and Rachel raise the grandchildren to begin families of their own. They live out their days in true joy with a wonderful story to pass on to future generations.
