This book tells about Paddy Quinn, the famous one-armed war correspondent. He is on what would be his final Civil War assignment: the funeral of the assassinated President Lincoln. Quinn and his new bride Felice are aboard the steamboat Sultana going up the spring-flooded Mississippi River toward Illinois to meet the Funeral Train, when their honeymoon vessel stops at Vicksburg. The Sultana takes on a pathetic human cargo of 2,000 sick and ragged survivors of the hellish Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp. This motley group of prisoners are kept alive only by their desire to get home. Quinns lot is now thrown in with some of the unluckiest veterans of that awful war.