Giuseppe Rocco, an Italian immigrant, raises himself from nothing to immense wealth and political influence in northern California through his self-made scavenger business and a series of shrewd land investments. His money and power allow him to possess a bride of high birth and breeding, and through their loveless marriage Giuseppe Rocco becomes the patriarch of a dynasty of three sons: Joey, Johnny, and Matthew.

Everyone is stunned when eighteen-year-old Joey abruptly runs off to Reno to wed Sally Martinez, a penniless grocery-store checkout clerk. But as Rocco gradually recognizes in his tough young daughter-in-law a steely determination equal to his own, he begins to see her as a means to further his empire. The outcome is not what readers have come to expect from countless Hollywood and television versions of the old Horatio Alger myth.