Roark Banning, a fugitive from a Confederate prison, had made himself an enemy of a member of the Wilderness Brigade--a band of rugged deserters and mountaineers--the only men who could get him back to Northern lines.
How Roark Banning became a guest at a plantation, how his strange attraction for the lovely mistress of the house complicated his attempt to return to the North, and how he became involved in a stealthy war-within-a-war--these are the elements of this vivid and exciting story.