The saga of the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia, concludes
in this tenth volume of the Civil War Battle Series with sons in every
theater of the war. For a time, Mac and Titus fight in the Shenandoah,
Mac with Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry at the battle of Third Winchester and
Titus with Mosby's Rangers in the cut-and-slash tactics of guerrilla
warfare. The cavalry, however, must throw its weight behind the defenses
at Petersburg, where U.S. Grant's army methodically pressures the
remnants of Robert E. Lee's legions. Cory fights against William T.
Sherman in the Carolinas, and Henry rides with Nathan Bedford Forrest in
Alabama.
In Culpeper the farm is well behind Union lines. Despite her mother's
admonitions, Cordelia is still intrigued with the attentions of a Yankee
officer. He beau's only failing is the belief that he cannot let the war
end without experiencing combat.
Nathan Hatcher, now a so-called Galvanized Yankee, wears Union blue in
the Dakota Territory. There he fights to survive both rugged winter
weather and the fierce tribes whose goal is to thwart the invading
hordes of settlers. Similar tribal resentments color the Comanche unrest
in Texas, where Pie and Rachel Jones have settled. In the meantime,
traveling to Texas are Cory's wife, Lucille, her aunt, and a wounded
blockade runner whose gratitude to the two women has taken a romantic
turn.
With the coming of spring in 1865, the war reaches its climax in
Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama. Mac is not far from the McLean
house when Lee meets with Grant. Cory is at hand, too, when Joseph E.
Johnston parleys with Sherman. Titus, however, finds himself enmeshed in
the complicated scheme of one of the darkest plots of the war.
Finally, among the war's last victims is the Brannon farm itself. As
carpetbaggers move into the South, this prime real estate is too good to
leave in the hands of defeated Rebels. For their part, the Brannons have
only so much fight left in them. The unsettled West holds more promise
than the scarred and wrecked land of northern Virginia. Cory already has
one foot in Texas; he others are not far behind. Titus remains absent,
estranged. Before departing her homeland, however, a mother has one last
thing to do.
