The last half of 1863 has taken a toll on the Brannon family, but winter has finally forced the armies to suspend campaigning. The lull in the fighting allows Mac to take leave from Jeb Stuart's cavalry, and Will comeshome from a Richmond hospital to convalesce.
What little calm Christmas brings, however, is shattered with the sudden appearance—as if from the grave—of Titus, the son believed to have been lost to the war more than a year earlier. Though his return is joyous news, Titus is devastated when he finds his wife remarried and pregnant. Tensions escalate when he learns that his brother, Henry, is the father. In his bitterness and pain, Titus unleashes a personal war on the new family.
Will's sense of honor soon compels him to return to duty, where his is swept into the fighting in the Wilderness. For a time, Mac is with him, but a Federal raid near Richmond propels the Confederate cavalry toward the crossroads at Yellow Tavern and destiny.
News from the war again hits hard at the Brannon farm, now behind enemy lines. Of the two brothers left there, one seeks vengeance on the Yankees fighting in the Shenandoah Valley.
James Reasoner, a veteran writer of historical fiction, is the author of the Civil War Battle series and the Wagons West series. He has also written Westward, Expedition, and Outpost, a frontier trilogy set in the years before the Lewis and Clark expedition. He received the 2014 ReadWest Award for Literary Excellence in Fiction.
Since beginning his narrating career in 1996, Lloyd James (also known as Sean Pratt) has been credited with more than 600 audiobooks. He has earned several awards, including six Audiofile Earphones Awards and two nominations for the Audie Award. His performances include Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck, Encounters with Jesus and Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller, and Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley Jr. He lives in Maryland with his wife and their children.