In late August 1849, in an apparently peaceful Spain, a rape was committed.
Suspected of being the rapist's murderer, Joseph helplessly witnesses his wife's death.
Forced to flee Spain for the New World, he now calls himself Jack Love.
He leaves his brother Emet, his sister-in-law Rachel and their three young children: Hiram, Rivka and Moses, a boy saved from slavery, at the mercy of the royal authorities.
Jack Love, a veteran of the Carlist Wars in Spain, crosses the New World with revolvers.
His brother Emet is murdered by the slave trader Bonito Abbas, who in the same act of violence kidnaps his young nephew Hiram to take him with him on his gold rush .
A judge commissions three ruthless mercenaries to hunt down Jack Love.
Hiram, renamed Mateo, plunges into the violence of his new father, abandoning his true identity and his true past to oblivion.
His mother Rachel, accompanied by her two children, crossed the Atlantic in the hope of finding him.
She ends up in California, living in a mill by a river, resigned to waiting for the unlikely reunion.
Twelve years will pass. The paths of Rachel, Jack Love and Mateo will finally cross but their features and identities have irrevocably changed.

Consumed by a thirst for revenge, will Mateo choose to fight his own family to the death?