It is the eve of the Civil War. Newspaperman John Gage travels to Charleston, South Carolina, where the first battle will soon occur at Fort Sumter. Sent there as a spy, Gage also seeks answers to more personal concerns: an unexplained love lost five years earlier and the sudden ties of his family’s company to the Confederacy. In Charleston, Gage: •\tmakes an enemy out of Ransom Pierce, a dangerous secessionist, with each man holding a deadly secret about the other; •\twitnesses the travesties of slavery and befriends Gus Ward, a slave desperate to return to his family in Maryland; and •\tlearns of a Confederate plot to seize Washington that is so connected to his family’s company that his mother’s life is in jeopardy. Gage must get back to Washington, but before he can do so his secret mission is discovered and he is sentenced to death by a rigged tribunal. It appears that all might be lost—the capital, his mother, and all that he has learned about himself. But John Gage isn’t finished yet.