When the Civil War ended, many Confederate soldiers returned to their homes and found them reduced to blackened ruins. Often, their families had been murdered or had disappeared.

After Appomattox, Col. Rodney Tilt and the men of the Eleventh Virginia decide to to home together as a unit.

They pass deserters, bushwackers and union cavalry units. Then, when outside Lynchburg, they see a northern patrol rush into the city and begin shooting surrendered Confederate soldiers. One man escapes and tells them that Lincoln has been assassinated and the Union Cavalry is searching the roads looking for payback.

Along the road they are joined by Margaret Forsythe, Meg, who tells them that some horsemen found that her family was sympathetic to the union and killed her two younger brothers and made off with her mother and sister.

Later, the unit is ambushed and many of their unit are killed. Some other members make out on their own and the few remaining arrive at Col. Tilt's home in time to see it being attacked by outlaw rebels. They drive them off and start the long road of rebuilding their holdings.

The characterization was not well done and the reader never got into Rodney Tilt's thoughts enought to find sympathy. Another central character changes his personality during the course of the novel and this change also was insonsistent.

As for a picture of the South, after the Civil War, it gave a good description and was enjoyable. ( )