This is a story about a 12 year old boy growing up on the family homestead on the banks of the Osage River near the Missouri-Kansas border in the period at the start of the American Civil War. It details the everyday events in the life of his family until their idyllic world is devastated when the town of Osceola is pillaged and burned by Kansas Jayhawkers. In the weeks that follow the family struggles for survival and finally flee for safety further north. The young boy then enlists in the Union Army from a misguided quest for solace and revenge. His service in the 21st Missouri Regiment then chronicles the everyday life of a common soldier as he experiences the full horrors of war in the epic Battle of Shiloh. He then endures the long and tedious march to Corinth, Mississippi, culminating in the bloody Battles of Iuka and Corinth.
