When President Lincoln sent out the call for a voluntary army to defend the fragile Union of States threatened by the secession of southern states, some who first answered the call were farm boys from western Massachusetts. This is the story of the experiences of one regiment, the 52nd Massachusetts Volunteers, who fought the Rebels in the bayou country of South Louisiana. Every participant in their engagements, the farm boys and their commanders, and the Rebels and theirs, considered south Louisiana a fascinating foreign country. By chance, two northern soldiers spoke the Acadian French of their Quebec neighbors. A common language permitted them a rare opportunity to communicate with the enslaved who followed the Union soldiers to freedom without being able to communicate with their liberators in French-speaking Acadiana.

Within the framework of known history, the author has told a compelling story of young men of the 52nd growing up in the crucible of war and older men and women of disparate cultures first clashing and ultimately recognizing the commonalities of their cultures. The reader is delighted to learn that an appreciation of humor and the bizarre are as universal qualities of fellow men as pride and cruelty.