It is 1865. Jesse Wilder has survived the horrors of Shiloh, the hell of a Yankee prison camp, and the shame of volunteering for the Union army of the West – the only way to escape certain death in the camp. Now the war is over and he has come home to Tennessee. But the word of his treachery has preceded him and Jesse finds himself shunned by his neighbors, and worse, disinherited by his late father.