This book is not your typical historical fiction, even though it portrays real historical figures and events. It follows the Drake family, whose patriarch, Tom Drake, changes history as we understand it. The relevant question is not “What if the South had won the Civil War?” That was not in the cards. A more pertinent question is “What if the Civil War had ended in a stalemate?” This sweeping saga opens in 1850 and traces events leading up to the Civil War, the Civil War itself, and the aftermath in an alternate history.