Photographer Robert McEntee is busy settling into a new studio, tutoring former slave Frederick Foons as his apprentice, and worrying about his errant brother, Andrew serving in the army on the Peninsula of Virginia. When Frederick's escaped grandmother arrives in Washington, D.C. bearing news of the Confederacy's monstrous iron ship, Assistant Secretary of War Thomas Scott dispatches Rob to Newport News to gather intelligence to counter the threat. Rob is rapidly enmeshed in murder and the battle of the ironclads Monitor and Merrimack. Civil War photographs and woodcuts embellish the tale.