15-year-old Kaspar Schmeck, kitchen boy at the innkeeper Hempel, believes he has found a friend in the run-down Captain Emmerich. With him he flees from the poverty at home and the beatings of his boss in the duke's mercenary army, which was sold to the English king for the war against the insurgents in the North American colonies. Betrayed by Captain Emmerich, Kaspar meets a wide variety of characters, cheated and pressed peasants, adventurers and dreamers, for whom the foreign America is the land of unlimited possibilities. Their illusions are soon taken away, but Kaspar gains insight into what true friendship means.