Buck Jernigan, his wife Betty Gail and their twins, Norman and Polly, live in the small hamlet of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The Civil War reshapes their environment from a thriving tourist and granite Mecca to a war-ravaged county. Although the Jernigans are pro-Union their family becomes entangled in the horrors of the Civil War. Norman transforms from a boy into a man as he attends Georgia Military Institute and shoulders his first musket as a solider on Civil War battlefields from Resaca to Savannah in defense of his beloved state. Polly elopes to Savannah with pro-Union Congressman Joshua Hill's son, Legare. As the wife of a soldier she brews herbal medicine for the hospital in Savannah and ultimately faces the terror of an occupied city without her husband. From July 18th through November 16th of 1864 Union troops raid farms, destroy homes, and burn the City buildings of Stone Mountain. They leave the depot, the water tank and the railroad tracks in ruins with little Confederate opposition. With only forty men left in town by mid-1864, the odds are not in their favor. But with every great challenge, there must rise great men to defend their land and their beliefs. During a time of great change throughout the nation one family plays its part in the great war around them, forever to be changed themselves. The book has 637 endnotes.