On July 4th, 1876, Jeremiah McKinley looks forward to a great day among friends, family, and heroes in Sonoma County, California. Famous speakers, lurid carnival booths, historical displays, brass bands, foot races, and ballgames are scheduled at the county seat in Santa Rosa. Most important, McKinley's only teacher, Professor Elijah Applewood, is returning to California from the East Coast to visit him after an absence of twenty-five years. However, McKinley's celebration of the American centennial is troubled by the words of the dead, who seem intent on contacting him in dreams and through the seeming transmigration of his father's soul to the person of a little boy. Furthermore, a series of puzzling notes and messages follows him throughout the day, and a local spiritualist expresses enmity toward him. When a visiting senator is found dead, suspicion leads to his old rival, Professor Applewood, whose sudden disappearance from the festivities makes McKinley a suspected accessory to a fugitive.

Throughout this day McKinley reflects on the journey that brought him here, the wondrous and hazardous trek among pioneers from Missouri to California, the Bear Flag War, the Sonoma Mission, and the Gold Rush. It is exactly this past that has caught him up inextricably in the mysterious, portentous events that take hold of him as he communes with his departed first wife, Teresa; ponders his first love and current wife, Lucinda, as well as his former rival for her love, William. Moreover, he remembers his father, a distant, God-crazed, self-proclaimed preacher who had wandered the wilderness alone throughout most of Jeremiah's childhood. As the day ends, the senator's assassin and the author of the disturbing messages are revealed. McKinley has his last congress with the dead and confronts his greatest threat, emerging secure in the love of his wife and children as old mysteries come to light.