Enter through a window into a vanished world, seen from a woman's point of view; a refreshingly candid view that necessarily remains private because social custom forbids it become public. Here we see the gentlemen of the South rushing from the drawing-room to the front lines of battle and back again, as the ladies come to call, play games, flirt, and gossip incessantly. There's no sense of history or historicism in these pages. Great events, statesmen, and scoundrels are viewed not through the familiar, fixed prism of the past but as bits and pieces of a turbulent, changing present.

Priscilla Larkin, 22, born into plantation wealth and gentility, leaves finishing school to manage the family estate as the Union army occupies north Alabama. She faces an uncertain future without relinquishing her dignity or her humor, though both will be tested in the days to come: an impending tragedy she could never have comprehended, and would not have believed if she could.