In 1861, sixteen-year-old ROB JOHNSON’S father and older brother are killed by the Yankees. Left alone, his main goal becomes saving the family farm in a mountainous border region of Virginia near the Potomac River. FANNIE is an ambitious beauty who wants Rob to help her carry messages from Southern sympathizers in Maryland to the Confederates. His childhood friend, NATE, who has no loyalty except to himself, finds that the war offers many opportunities for profit.
By fall, Rob realizes that defending the farm from raiding parties is hopeless and joins the Confederate Army. His adventures as a soldier lead him to LAURA, his first real love. During Stonewall Jackson’s Bath-Romney campaign, Rob and his fellow soldiers are captured, then rescued by Rebel Rangers. Joining the Rangers, they tear up rail tracks and harass Federal supply lines.
Hearing that Laura is pregnant and stranded in Richmond, Rob sets off to find her. Along the way, he helps out a Quaker family. In exchange for their assistance in locating Laura, he becomes a conductor on the Underground Railroad. When she has a baby girl, he doubts that the child is his and leaves them with the Friends. Because of his attraction to a Quaker woman, ABIGAIL, Rob finds that he is no longer welcomed by that community. She is married off to a church elder and he re-joins the Confederate Army. He never stops caring for Abigail, but when he hears she’s had a son, he thinks he’s lost her.
Rob and his comrades are captured and sent to Point Lookout Prison in Maryland. In 1864 they are forced to work in the smallpox “Pest House” and meet an Irish orderly, TIM, who helps them escape.
Returning home, Rob finds that Morgan County is controlled by hardline Northerners who are bent on settling scores and exacting revenge from their Rebel neighbors. He realizes his war didn’t end at Appomattox. Stripped of his civil rights, Rob fights to save his farm from confiscation and sale. Hearing that Laura and the little girl have smallpox, he helps them, but Laura dies. He promises to care for the child. Returning after the funeral, he finds that his farm has been sold at auction and is held by tenant farmers. Now he must deal with the duplicity of old friends, as well as his own failures. Rob struggles to regain his land and make a new life for himself and the child