A novel of baseball and the Civil War, and a love story. Joseph Tyler is a baseball-loving Virginia farmboy swept into fighting for the Confederacy. Wounded and left for dead, he rises from the burning battlefield, rescues a dying Union soldier from the flames, and is captured. Sent to a foul Union prison in New York, he bears a letter for the dead soldier’s fiancée. He escapes from the prison with a dramatic sprint from center field during a baseball game. Sheltered by a kind widow, he waits until the war ends, and then finally delivers the letter. In a Hudson River town he starts playing semi-pro baseball, and meets and falls in love with the intended recipient of the -letter.