The novel portrays the wayfarers August and Edevart's experiences while they travel around in Norway for more or less random work. The trilogy continues with August three years later, and concludes with The Road Leads On in 1933.
The events in Wayfarers take place between 1864 and the 1870s. The entire trilogy describes the conflict between a traditional subsistence economy and a modern commercial and industrial society, as it emerged in Norway in the second half of the 1800s and the early 1900s. August is the main character that ties the three novels together.