The action spans the area from Pennsylvania and Virginia to Georgia, Mississippi, and Illinois. The seven members of the Brannon clan of Culpeper County, Virginia, experience a wide range of the many hardships of war.

The Southern setbacks of July 1863 have fallen hard on the Brannons, for two sons were with Lee in Pennsylvania and one was at Vicksburg. They still mourn the loss of another, Titus, presumed dead but actually interned in a Northern prison camp for seven months.

Mac Brannon, in Stuart's cavalry, helps to protect the Army of Northern Virginia as it withdraws to Virginia. Of special concern to him are the ambulance wagons, one of which carries his wounded brother, Will.

In Vicksburg, Cory Brannon recuperates from an illness, and as his health returns, he looks for ways to escape the Union occupation and join Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry.

In the Yankee prison camp outside of Chicago, Titus is determined to escape and make his way home. He does not yet know the price of his freedom.

Cory and his comrades connect with Forrest just in time for the action at Chickamauga.

Although the battle goes well for the Confederates, Forrest and his commander, Braxton Bragg, have a falling out. Circumstances dictate that Cory remain with Bragg in the Confederate camps that encircle Chattanooga, but when Bragg decides to outwait the Union army trapped before him, the scene is set for the arrival of a new Federal commander, U.S. Grant.