After four long years of fighting, Jackson Logan, a Civil War veteran, returns to Baltimore after the war, hoping to resume work in the family business and to be reunited with his wife, Cameron. But Cameron is determined to return to her family's Mississippi plantation and reclaim her heritage. Though her husband forbids her, she packs her bags and heads south on her own. Jackson follows her to Elmwood, where the couple learn to love one another again, and face the danger that exists in the precarious peace of a devastated nation.