Elizabeth MacPherson returns from England to find her family in a state of disarray and tries to set things straight as her brother faces a messy lawsuit involving a home for Confederate widows, her parents threaten to divorce after twenty-five years of marriage, and a body turns up in the trunk of her brother's law partner's car. Interspersed is the parallel tale of Civil War soldier who, with a friend, confiscates a part of the Confederate treasury.