This book is set in the antebellum south. The main character left the Louisiana plantation as a young man before the Civil War because he hated slavery. He returned as a wealthy man to save the plantation from carpetbaggers. He and his wife have many adventures and he is saved several times by her remarkable shooting. His wife and her brother lost their parents when very young and never knew anything about the parent's families. Out of the blue, their father's brother (their uncle) walks in the door. He is a Count from Austria and informs them they will inherit a vast business empire when he passes. It is wealth beyond their wildest dreams.