Appomattox

The saga of the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia, concludes in this tenth volume of the Civil War Battle Series with sons in every theater of the war. For a time, Mac and Titus fight in the Shenandoah, Mac with Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry at the battle of Third Winchester and Titus with Mosby's Rangers in the cut-and-slash tactics of guerrilla warfare. The cavalry, however, must throw its weight behind the defenses at Petersburg, where U.S. Grant's army methodically pressures the remnants of Robert E. Lee's legions. Cory fights against William T. Sherman in the Carolinas, and Henry rides with Nathan Bedford Forrest in Alabama.

In Culpeper the farm is well behind Union lines. Despite her mother's admonitions, Cordelia is still intrigued with the attentions of a Yankee officer. He beau's only failing is the belief that he cannot let the war end without experiencing combat.

Nathan Hatcher, now a so-called Galvanized Yankee, wears Union blue in the Dakota Territory. There he fights to survive both rugged winter weather and the fierce tribes whose goal is to thwart the invading hordes of settlers. Similar tribal resentments color the Comanche unrest in Texas, where Pie and Rachel Jones have settled. In the meantime, traveling to Texas are Cory's wife, Lucille, her aunt, and a wounded blockade runner whose gratitude to the two women has taken a romantic turn.

With the coming of spring in 1865, the war reaches its climax in Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama. Mac is not far from the McLean house when Lee meets with Grant. Cory is at hand, too, when Joseph E. Johnston parleys with Sherman. Titus, however, finds himself enmeshed in the complicated scheme of one of the darkest plots of the war.

Finally, among the war's last victims is the Brannon farm itself. As carpetbaggers move into the South, this prime real estate is too good to leave in the hands of defeated Rebels. For their part, the Brannons have only so much fight left in them. The unsettled West holds more promise than the scarred and wrecked land of northern Virginia. Cory already has one foot in Texas; he others are not far behind. Titus remains absent, estranged. Before departing her homeland, however, a mother has one last thing to do.