In 1811, moments after a devastating earthquake, French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme rescues Annie Lark from the ruins of her family home on the shores of Mississippi. While Jacques nurses her back to health, Annie learns to love the strong, brooding man and becomes his "River Wife." More than a century later, in 1930, Hedie Rails comes to Jacques' Landing to marry Clement Ducharme, a direct descendant of the fur trapper and river pirate. When, night after late night, mysterious phone calls take Clement from their home, a pregnant Hedie finds comfort in a set of old leather-bound journals. But as she reads of Jacques' disturbing history-- his tragedy-stricken romance with Annie; his exploits with Omah, a freed slave who joins him as a river raider; his life with his second wife, Laura, and their daughter, Little Maddie, who inherits her father's dream and passion for the land-- Hedie fears that history is repeating itself with Jacques' kin. Through intertwined stories, Agee vividly portrays a lineage of love and heartbreak, passion and deceit, as each river wife comes to discover that blind devotion cannot keep the past from haunting the present.