In Rendezvous, Wheeler takes us back to 1826, when Skye, a twenty-year-old pressed seaman, deserts his Royal Navy ship at Fort Vancouver, escapes the minions of the British Navy and the Hudson's Bay Company, and makes his way into the trackless Columbia River country alone, armed only with a belaying pin and his determination to be a free man.
Skye's dream of making his way to Boston and Cambridge, to an education at Harvard and a life of ease, begins to dissolve when he meets such mountain legends as Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and Jim Beckwourth and learns the tricks of survival among the Nez Perce, Shoshones, and Crows and the wilderness tactics needed to fight "Bug's Boys," the dreaded Blackfeet of the Yellowstone River region.
And, for the first time, Skye learns to love - the beautiful Crow girl Many Quill Woman, whom he calls "Victoria."