Harry Seymour and Samantha Hazelwood want to get married and build a family. He is a college student from a wealthy New Orleans family, and she is the daughter of an old Virginia family. They could be married without delay, if not for the war that tore the United States apart. With heavy heart, Harry enlists with the Confederacy but hates the thought of fighting his own kin from Connecticut. In the meantime, Sam is recruited to be a spy in Washington.
As the war comes to an end, the two lovers are reunited. Harry is a broken man-financially and psychologically, having faced the terrors of war and lived to tell about them. Still madly in love, Sam welcomes him home; with the help of relatives and a former slave, they rebuild their fortunes during the turbulent Reconstruction. But their troubles are far from over. An old nemesis will not let the war end at Appomattox.
Elliot Seymour is one of Harry's Connecticut cousins, and he finds a way to imprison Sam. He confiscates the lovers' home and uses their former slaves against them. Will Harry and Sam's love survive yet another tragedy? War is hell; it can ruin an entire country, but it can also make warriors out of cowards, heroes out of slaves, and spouses out of lovers-if only good can prevail in the midst of horror.