This book was a novel, a work of the imagination. Yet it is in general accurate both in the hostory of the events it chronicles and on the character and personalilty of the various individuals. To sum up in a phrase, this is the imagined inside story of a known outside story.
Through the lives of James & Dolley Madison, Andrew & Rachel Jackson, Winfield Scott, and Sally McQuirk ("the daughter of a Washington publisher who is determined to cover the war as a journalist", the reader lives through "...the thirty months of the war that shaped American destiny". (Quotes from jacket blurb)
