Pvt. Ian Campbell, a deserter from the Confederate army, has abandoning family and cause, to rescue his Yankee lover, Drew Conrad, from the cruel abuses he endured as a prisoner of war. During the chaotic spring of 1865, the mismatched comrades make the arduous trek to the presumed safety of Ian's home. But the territory they must cross is not only hostile to recreants and Northerners but to those few men who understood what Walt Whitman meant by "And your very flesh shall be a great poem."