"Thousands of Irishmen serve valiantly on the fields of battle, yet others deny that the South's rebellion is any concern of theirs. Amid maddening rumors and lingering superstitions, an effort to draft more Irishmen into the army leads to a violent confrontation. A local death threatens to become an international crisis." At the request of President Lincoln, Union Major Abel Jones follows the trail of guilt from a windswept graveyard to the killing fields of Fredericksburg - and soon learns that no one really wants to know the truth behind the general's murder. While heartbreaking revelations tear at his own family, Jones must work his way through encounters with Irish secret societies and past the distrust of men and women for whom starvation and oppression are recent memories. Political agendas disregard mere facts, and even the dead general might not be the man he first seemed.