Thomas Jefferson Byrd is a thirteen-year-old in the wilderness that is the Mexican territory of Texas and he has to decide the difference between his friends and his enemies.

From 1865 to 1869, freed slaves Ezra--ten years old at the end of the Civil War--and his father deal with their newfound liberty, traveling from their former master's North Carolina plantation to finally settle in a community of free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, where they gain education and professions.

In 1863, fifteen-year-old Private Allen of South Carolina, captured at the Battle of Gettysburg, decides to switch his allegiance to the Union and is sent to fight "savages" in Dakota Territory, where he confronts his prejudices and learns what heroism really means.

Explores period frontier life and contradictory accounts in an effort to discern the true story of a 19th-century bear-mauling victim who pursued vengeance against the companions who left him for dead.