Basso takes an entire South Carolina community and brings it to life during the Civil War era. The story revolves around John Bottomley. He has been educated in the North (New Jersey) and had plans of becoming a writer when family duty obligates him to return to his family plantation. His life during this time is one of isolation because he is in love with a married woman and no one can understand his "pro-North" views. It doesn't help that he is confused about his feelings concerning slavery. He grows more and more aware of his surrounding society as time goes on. Later, after a stint in government, Bottomley joins the military to aid in the war. Parallel to these life changes is the story of Bottomley's brother and his mysterious disappearance after a murder. ( )

John Bottomly is a reluctant planter; after an education in New Jersey, he thought of becoming a writer, but his father summoned his home and gave him a plantation. He grows more aware of the impact of slavery upon the master class, embodied most clearly in his mentally ill mother’s night delusions that the soup has been poisoned, the house set on fire, etc. Even so, when war comes, he feels that his loyalty is to the South. This is a novel driven less by plot than by characters and by John’s growing ability to see them clearly. There is Lydia Stanhope, the senator’s wife John has been in love with, but whom he comes to see as grasping and shallow, and Arabella, her pretty, reckless stepdaughter (not much younger than herself). Close friends with his sister, Missy, Arabella continuously simultaneously attracts and repels him. And the mulatto barber Allbright, who seems somehow implicated in his brother Cameron’s flight, draws John’s interest and ire to a degree that seems unreasonable… until we realize his true identity. Though the novel passes through desperate times that will inevitably destroy the world John has known, it is less about despair than about John’s growing acceptance and understanding of the people around him. Though sometimes rapport is impossible, and sometimes understanding comes too late, a strong thread of hope runs throughout.

Interestingly, no Union soldiers—no Yankees of any kind really—appear in the novel. The final act of destruction is performed by a Confederate officer. Though the ravages of the Northern army are referred to, they aren’t the primary focus; rather, it is the relationship of Southerners to each other, their different ways of perceiving each other, the South, its way of life, and war. ( )