The fall of Vicksburg made a Yankee river of the Mississippi, eclipsing all rational southern hope of prevailing in the War. But Richmond’s refusal of defeat drove the families of this backland and a hundred others like it to close protectively against Confederate forces replete with bloodhounds and up to Regimental in size, deployed for the herding of ‘recruits’ as of a lesser species. Young Lee Christmas and his Black warrior neighbor, James Mann, find common ground in the universal conflict of the Peace that followed the War, where the Blacks had been obliged to raise their own military in defense of their new-found freedom. Taking wind and fire as allies, the Blacks salvage a bloody standoff from the threat of massacre. But James must afterward flee into an extended exile at the North, leaving his wife and children behind. But when James at last redeems his promise to return South for his family, it is Lee Christmas, now the Master of a river-schooner, who spirits James to safety from among his enemies.