Jim Ferris is the "alpha male"-- warm, charismatic, and successful, he is the consummate provider for his wife Alice and children, Jack and Elyssa. It feels as though nothing can touch the idyllic world he has created. But when he dies suddenly, grief, jealousy and dysfunction fill the vacuum-- until the family's tensions surface a decade later at Jack's 21st birthday party.

Captain Ludvig Kahlen sets out to tame an uninhabitable land and build a colony in the name of the King. While braving the elements, he is joined by some indentured serfs who have fled their tyrannical magistrate, which makes them all targets of a deadly conflict.