Based in the period 1864-65, this book describes the adventures of Jeb Wolf, who takes his pregnant wife south to visit her father in Tennessee. When they arrive, her father is missing, he has been falsely convicted of spying and taken to Johnson Island, a Confederate prison on Sandusky Bay in Ohio. Jeb goes to rescue him from the island in the middle of winter, manages to get him free and takes him back to Tennessee. In the meantime, a group of Hendersons, who were behind the false accusation, have taken over his father-in-law's farm. Jeb rallies his friends and father and heads south again to attack the Hendersons and drive them off the land.