What Lies West is set in the mid-nineteenth-century American West, where everyone is in pursuit of some sort of dream. Carolina (Lina) Clark, the young widow of a ne'er-do-well overland trader, can't afford to dream, thanks to the bankrupt business her late husband has left her with. She's just a few days away from losing the business for good, when she meets two unexpected traveling partners for the journey west. Josephine has hopes of being a prosperous madam, but she actually has no previous experience, and Henry wants to be a dashing cavalryman. As they make their way west, Lina searches for something of her own to build her new life upon.

Lina's travels take her across the Overland Trail, into the diggings of the California gold rush, to the center of a booming San Francisco, and up to a small settlement on the shores of Puget Sound. Along the way, she becomes caught between one man's single-minded ambition and another man's hopes for building a dream that lasts. Just when Lina's search for her own place in the world seems over, a far more desperate search begins - the search for the truth.