In the fall of 1846, young medical student Adolph Pinto witnesses a demonstration of anesthesia and sets off on a lifelong quest to bring "life without pain" to the masses. A darkly comic and sweeping novel in which Pinto endures every tribulation with hope.

This ironic comedy by the author of the acclaimed Leib Goldkorn series and "King of the Jews" follows Pinto, a Hungarian Jew and former medical student, who takes the wrong ship and winds up out West during the craze of the California Gold Rush. Never discouraged, he tries to bring scientific enlightenment to a band of boys from the local Modoc Indian tribe. But strikes and explosions erupt at the nearby gold mine where the Modocs have been enslaved, turning his attempt at utopia into Dante's hell.