On a summer day in 1902, innocent John Barrington Ashley from a small mining town in Illinois was sentenced to death for the murder of his old friend and companion Breckenridge Lansing. Five days later, on the way to execution, he was mysteriously rescued by a group of complete strangers to him, disappeared and his traces were lost. Thus began this amazing story, in which the destinies of Ashley himself, his children and the children of the murdered Lansing were to be intricately intertwined - a story in which there was a place for wandering through exotic countries and dangerous adventures, passionate love, high self-sacrifice and thorny roads to fame and success.