In The Dixie Widow, Belle Wickham's sorrow turns to anger and bitterness, then finally to blind hatred for the North. She declares in steely voice, "I live for only one purpose: to see the Union destroyed," and vows to remain a widow until the Yankees are whipped. Belle is persuaded to travel to her Winslow relatives in the Washington, D.C. area and spy for the Confederacy-at the risk of her own life. Taken into the home of her grandfather, Captain Whitfield Winslow, she is in a strategic position to secure secret information to pass to the South. But an even greater tragedy awaits the Winslow family.