Julia was like a child, or rather she was a child when they married and life was full of fields of flowers and blissful nights. But the Civil War was raging and he had to go fight for Virginia. After his first battle at Kernstown, he learns that a bushwhacker has murdered his child bride and he vows vengeance, but first he has to complete his obligation to the South and Stonewall Jackson. Arrested as a deserter, he faces a firing squad but is saved at the last moment by his wife's younger brother, Thomas. He also meets his nemesis, the Shadow. Thomas is killed at Gettysburg and he is wounded in the eye at Payne's Farm. At the Montgomery Sulphur Springs Hospital, he serves as a nurse until one day the man who killed Julia is brought in. The chase leads him across Kentucky where he encounters a fat lady, Sue Munday, the cross dressing bushwhacker, William Clark Quantrill, snake handlers, and joins up with a young escaped slave, Booger. The climax comes deep in the belly of Mammoth Cave as his vow of revenge is denied in a strange twist of fate.