The War Between the States presents Brendan Bonneau with a choice between his loyalties to his family, owners of one of the largest and most profitable plantations in South Carolina, or his oath as an officer in the United States Navy. For maritime artifacts conservator Lillian Cherrington, life changes from the predictably mundane when her father reveals a long-held secret and makes a dying request. Using skills developed from years of revealing secrets buried beneath layers of history, she searches for the truth about their ancestor, a man who has been alternately honored or vilified by generations of their family since the last days of the Civil War. Lillian's quest takes her from dusty archives in Maryland, to the ruins of her family's plantation in South Carolina, to eighteenth-century rumrunner's dens on the island of Bermuda, where Lillian's search is complicated by love, threatened by smugglers, and thwarted by secrets kept and lies bequeathed for generations.