博客來Stephen Dawson and Roger Phillips are best friends and former roommates who have recently graduated from college. They are both young and handsome, but Stephen is more conservative and steady. Roger is more cavalier about life, a bit of wild card, and is drawn towards danger.
Stephen is living at home with his parents and working in his family’s steamboat transport business. Roger is working at a lumber milling company and resisting his father’s efforts to enlist his help in the newspaper business.
They join the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment following Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s call for volunteers to defend the Union. However, before doing so, Stephen meets Roger’s beautiful and irrepressible older sister, Elizabeth. Despite Roger’s strong warnings to Stephen not to become involved with his independent and opinionated sister, sparks immediately fly. Stephen is attracted by Elizabeth’s inner strength and her joie de vivre attitude towards life.
Following their initial military training at Fort Snelling, Stephen and Roger are off to the war. They fight in the first major battle of the war at Bull Run. The Regiment is badly bloodied at Bull Run, and it becomes clear that the war will not be fought and won in the first ninety days as everyone had hoped.
Elizabeth convinces the lovely and intelligent Suzanne York, a mutual friend of Roger and her, to move with her to Washington. Elizabeth first serves as a war news reporter for her father’s newspaper and then as a telegraph operator with the Military Telegraph Office. Suzanne is an unexpected ray of sunshine, loyal to her best friend, and secretly in love with Roger. She is employed at the War Department in supply requisitioning and procurement. Roger is incensed by his sister’s actions. Stephen, however, is further intrigued by Elizabeth’s boldness.
Stephen and Roger spend their first Christmas holiday season during the war with the young ladies in Washington. They enjoy their shared time together, and Roger secretly begins to see Suzanne in a different light.
During the summer of 1862, Roger is wounded and almost captured during the Peninsula Campaign. President Lincoln hears about Elizabeth’s missing brother and introduces himself. Lincoln encourages Elizabeth to keep her spirits up while they continue to search for him.
There is sudden and unexpected excitement when a wedding is planned. The parents debate the difficulties of traveling to Washington in terrible weather. No one is certain whether or not they can pull off a wedding in the middle of winter.
After a hard and severe winter, the reality of war reasserts itself. The new spring brings the Battle of Chancellorsville followed closely by Gettysburg. The Union generals desperately try to find General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Suzanne can only await the news from the three day Battle of Gettysburg as both General Lee and President Lincoln each seek victory and an end to the war. However, for Elizabeth and Suzanne the battle is all about the survival of their young soldiers. All roads lead to Gettysburg!
