Lower Canada, 1804. Arthur Stanton, lacking direction in his life and desperately seeking the approval of his father, wanders the streets of Montreal filled with daydreams of exotic lands and adventures inspired by novels and traveller's tales.

Lower Canada, 1804. Arthur Stanton, lacking direction in his life and desperately seeking the approval of his father, wanders the streets of Montreal filled with daydreams of exotic lands and adventures inspired by novels and traveller's tales. On a sudden whim he decides to sign up as a clerk in the fur trade and is sent on a mission to recover a cache of furs obtained from a secret beaver El Dorado. Accompanied by a down-at-heel band of voyageurs, led by a disgraced and drunken trader, he embarks on a journey by birchbark canoe into the northern wilderness. Paddling from Lachine to Lake Superior, and then across the unresolved border between Canada and the United States, Arthur's travels will take him into a series of baffling new worlds, where he will prove himself to be hapless in trade, hopeless in love, and terrified of the landscapes and peoples that surround him. Stumbling from one mishap into another, he will at last fall into disaster, seemingly betray his friends and companions, and have to begin a quest to set things right.