As the ten-volume saga concludes, the multiple strands of the story are
woven toward their resolution. As the war careens toward its inevitable
end, members of the Brannon family are involved in every theater of the
war and spread across the South. For a time, Mac and Titus Fight in the
Shenandoah Valley with Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry and Mosby's Rangers. In
the Carolinas Cory fights against William T. Sherman, and in Alabama
Henry rides with Nathan Bedford Forrest. In Culpeper, the Brannon family
farm lies behind Union lines. Despite her mother's admonitions, Cordelia
remains intrigued by the attentions of a Yankee officer, whose only
failing is the belief lie 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 who seek to repel the invaders from
The region. 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 Robert E . Lee meets with U. S. Grant. Cory is at
hand, too, when Joseph E. Johnston parleys with Sherman. Titus, however,
finds himself enmeshed in a complicated scheme regarding 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 staunch Confederates.
The Brannons must either fight or flee, and they 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,
and the others are not far behind. Before departing, however, a mother
must visit the grave of her firstborn at the lonely crossroads of Cold
Harbor.
