FRONTIER life in Minnesota a hundred years ago provides a colorful background for Mrs. Lovelace's new novel. The charming and dramatic romance of Delia DuGay, daughter of voyageurs, is the central theme, but of equal interest is the author's picture of the old trading posts scattered along the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, and the early Fort Snelling. At that historic fort, then the westerly outpost of young America's civilization, a handful of aristocrats, officers and their ladies, strive to maintain a gay social life in the midst of the wilderness.

Under the walls of the fort live the DuGays, the "divil DuGays," whose crowded cabin is always ready to welcome with impartial hospitality French settlers, soldiers, swashbuckling, jubilant voyageurs, Sioux braves and the great fur trader and state builder, Jasper Page. Most winning of all the delightful DuGays is the daughter Delia, whose personality has a wild-grape tang and sweetness and a frontier-bred strength. To her the family turns for guidance upon its eventful course; to her alone her voyageur brother, Narcisse, reveals the secret of his strange alliance with the Indians; to her comes Jasper Page himself to learn a new lesson in pride, and, and last, to find happiness in her love.

From the dust jacket