As of January 1866, Major Seth Parker, United States Marine Corps has been in war-ravaged Mississippi two months, investigating the murder of Treasury operative Alan Guthrie. Guthrie had been in Mississippi only a short time when he was killed, and his reason for being in the area remains a mystery, both to authorities here and, if they are to be believed, to his seniors in Washington. This is not Parker’s first foray into Mississippi’s hinterland. He was here in the spring of ‘63, before Vicksburg fell, but his covert operations at that time had led to only fleeting success and a precipitous departure with a bullet in his chest and a battle for his life. Widowed Rebecca Mackey lost not only her young husband and unborn son to war, but her father, a brother, and a sister. Now her sole surviving sibling, Eli Calhoon, ex-CSA, is fighting for his life, the victim of an attack linking him not only to Alan Guthrie’s murder, but to a web of intrigue in the U. S. Treasury. At a time when treason is synonymous with the South and her people convenient scapegoats to disguise the misdeeds of unprincipled men, Becky learns her brother is a suspect not only in Guthrie’s death but also continued sedition. Worse, the man who set his sights on Eli Calhoon two months earlier is Seth Parker, the enemy whose life she saved in 1863, a man she is loathe to trust, but who might prove her greatest ally. Honor’s Banner is a sequel to Charlsie Russell’s Camellia Creek published in 2013 and advances the mystery of murdered Treasury agent Alan Guthrie, the catalyst that brought Seth Parker into the lives of unreconstructed rebel Eli Calhoon and his reluctant bride. Rich in the history of the period, it explores the multi-faceted narrative of unwarranted war, state rights, federal violations of the Constitution, and the institutionalization of tyranny by a United States in the hands of fanatics and traitors, a focus largely ignored when discussing Reconstruction today.
