Casualties of war¿or murder? Virginia, 1861: Adair Stanford just wants to keep her children safe as the Civil War breaks out and her husband leaves to fight for the south. But when two dead men are found in the woods on her farm, she¿s compelled to act: she¿s found hidden signs that they didn¿t die in a shootout between enemies, but from murder. Isolated by her abolitionist beliefs, Adair is alone in her search for the truth until a stranger, his identity cloaked in deception, invades her world. Is he an added danger, or an ally? And do the threats and violence menacing her family stem from the ugly killings, or a shameful secret from the past? Set at the crossroads of north and south, this mystery explores the fraught relations between men and women, the enslaved and the free, and the horror of murder¿even in the midst of war.