The U.S. economy is in shambles. The ordinary citizen is slipping in his battle for family survival. The incoming president denounces the financial shenanigans of speculators and vows to regulate the greed of those who have precipitated the disaster. Vast acres of national forest and a plethora of small businesses are in a life and death struggle against corporate powerhouses skilled at making and exploiting the law. In ballot boxes across the country, the progressive vision has been ratified, promising a counter-offensive against decades of corporate control. The year is 1902.

Within an historical context eerily reflective of the current day, John Sagacity Adair, Sage to his friends, is determined to expose the chicanery of the financial establishment. He works secretly on behalf of the growing labor movement, pursuing his mission into hobo jungles, lumber camps, seedy saloons and the drawing rooms of the rich. Fighting beside him are a parlor house madam, a leader in the local Chinese tong, an Appalachian coal-miner's daughter and an Afro-American maitre d' who shows more class than the people he serves.

On the night Sage uncovers a potential timber fraud, he is also faced with a cry for help. A brutal railroad guard has been murdered and his friend's young nephew must be cleared of the crime. Faced with the choice between pursuing the personal or the political, Sage chooses the personal only to find himself led straight back to the political. Events cause Sage to question how he will maintain his humanity and hope over the course of what promises to be a life long struggle.