Tells the story of Jack Spayd, a talented young Canadian, growing up in a poor household with a drunken father in the slums of Cabbagetown, Toronto, during the Great Depression, whose musical talent and fight to achieve his ambitions takes him on an adventurous and perilous journey from the jazz clubs in Toronto to Las Vegas, where he gets caught up in the world of poker and the mafia; to the copper mines of Belgian Congo; to the city of London; and, finally, to the diamond mines of Africa.