Brayden Wakefield is quickly losing faith that hostilities between the Northern and Southern states will end peaceably. He and his neighbors, Fletcher Stedman and Royce Carlyle, seems to be in the minority in their belief that a war would not end in a few months. They know any clash would be long and brutal. But their loyalty to one another supplants their reluctance, and they are drawn into the politics and atrocities of the Civil War to save their kidnapped comrade, Caleb Jenkins. Nothing is as it seems, however. Together with Caleb's strong-willed wife, Sage, the plantation owners turned raiders squirrel behind enemy lines. Brayden uncovers lies and intrigue on both sides but as he and his fellow raiders execute their audacious plan, as they torch the layers of the conspiracy, Brayden finds love hidden among the ashes.