Twelve-year-old Samuel Collier is a lowly commoner on the streets of London. So when he becomes the page of Captain John Smith and boards the Susan Constant, bound for the New World, he cant believe his good fortune. Hes heard that gold washes ashore with every tide. But beginning with the stormy journey and his first contact with the native people, he realizes that the New World is nothing like he imagined. The lush Virginia shore where they establish the colony of James Town is both beautiful and forbidding, and its hard to know whos a friend or foe. As he learns the language of the Algonquian Indians and observes Captain Smiths wise diplomacy, Samuel begins to see that he can be whomever he wants to be in this new land.