The year is 1620. It is a time of upheaval and apocalyptic fears in England. In the midst of economic disaster, poverty, crime, and ever-worsening religious and political repression, a fundamentalist movement called Puritanism dreams of spiritual and national regeneration. A splinter group of Separatists transplants itself to the shores and forests of New England. They believe they have a God-given mission to redeem themselves, and mankind; they believe the cost of failure will be annihilation.

But New England is not, as the Puritans would like to believe, a tabula rasa or a virgin land. It is already inhabited by tens of thousands of Indians, with their own ways of work, war and worship. Their world, too, is a place of upheaval and uncertainty, ravaged by disease and profoundly changed by the presence of Europeans. The survivors must answer two questions: how will they survive in this rapidly changing world? and will they seek to accomodate the English – or fight them?