Nashville, December 1864. Federal forces have occupied the city for two long years of war, depriving its inhabitants of everything but their pride and their diminishing hopes for victory. Steven Moore, age twelve, and Dink, his slave companion, slip through the Union lines to search for Steven's father, an officer in General Hood's shattered Confederate army, which is limping its way toward Nashville after its disastrous defeat at Franklin just twenty miles south.

The boys are trapped behind the lines as the battle begins.... Told from Steven's perspective as a grown man looking back over thirty-six years, Madison Jones's trademark precise and lucid prose guides us through the disorienting fog of battle and of memory, following Dink and Steven toward the brutal climax that shocks them into recognition of their separate identities - black and white - and of the tragic consequences of war.