Soon after the start of the Civil War, 14-year-old runaway David Frakes Day told the so-called "patriotic lie" when he falsified his age and enlisted in the 57th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, becoming perhaps the youngest full-time spy in American military history. His courageous feats at the Battle of Vicksburg two years later eventually earned him a Medal of Honor, and his remarkable escapes from Andersonville and other military prisons--including one the night before his scheduled execution--remain the stuff of Civil War legend.

Day's postwar career as a muckraking journalist in Colorado proved no less treacherous. He angered powerful enemies with his investigative reporting of corrupt politicians and mining officials and survived assassination attempts, physical assaults, and countless libel suits to become an accomplished humorist. In this biography, Day emerges from historical obscurity to take his rightful place among the most intriguing figures of the Civil War and the American West.