Based on an extraordinary true story, this brilliant, meticulously researched novel flashes back to 1864 and the afternoon of the Battle of Franklin, five of the bloodiest hours of the Civil War. While the fierce fighting rages on Carrie's land, her plantation turns into a Confederate army hospital; four generals lie dead on her back porch; the pile of amputated limbs rises as tall as the smoke house. But when a wounded soldier named Zachariah Cashwell arrives at her house, he awakens feelings she had thought long dead —and inspires a passion as powerful and unforgettable as the war that consumes a nation.