Winner of the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, the John Eston Cook Award, and the Boyd Military Novel Award: "One of the best Civil War novels . . . McCaig's prose is gorgeous . . . stunning."--Houston Chronicle
Duncan Gatewood, seventeen and heir to Gatewood Plantation, falls in love with Maggie, a mulatto slave, who conceives a son, Jacob. Maggie and Jacob are sold south, and Duncan is packed off to the Virginia Military Institute--he will eventually fight for Robert E. Lee. Another Gatewood slave, Jesse--whose love for Maggie is unrequited--escapes to find her. Jesse finds his freedom and enlists in Mr. Lincoln's army; in time he will confront his former masters.
In his award-winning novel of the interlocked lives of masters and slaves, Donald McCaig conjures a passionate and richly textured story in the heart of America's greatest war.