Summary
Antebellum magnolias wilt under the weight of a single oath: whoever survives the coming cannons may claim the hand of the luminous, iron-willed belle. Buck Hineman, all drawl and restless ambition, marches off in butternut; Remington Osbury, poet-warrior with storm-grey eyes, follows, believing love is a higher flag than the Confederacy. Shiloh’s smoky crucible leaves Remington face-down in scarlet mud, tags lost, memory flickering like a damaged reel; Buck, unscathed, rides home to a victory that tastes of copper. A hasty wedding, a cradle rocked in lamplight, and the presumed-dead Remington reappears—gaunt, courteous, resigned to the role of honorary uncle while his heart calcifies. Decades later, the next generation pirouettes into the same maze: Luzelle, Buck’s flame-haired daughter, stirs the blood of Philip Burwood (bookish, principled) and Boyd Savely (smoldering, bankrupt of scruples). Their clans have feuded since steamboat days; the town bank, run by the Hinemans, sits at the quarrel’s trembling epicenter. Boyd, scorned and spiteful, cracks the vault, erases a single syllable from an old congratulatory letter, and unleashes a rumor that Remington, not Buck, sired Luzelle. The wedding stalls mid-aisle; pistols are oiled; honor demands blood on dogwood petals. At dawn, two septuagenarians lift their flintlocks, fire into the forgiving sky, and realize the true enemy is the lie itself. When the forgery surfaces, shame ricochets through the town like a cannonball down a corridor, leaving reconciliation in its crater.
Synopsis
Young Southerners Buck Hineman and Remington Osbury both are in love with the same woman, who promises to marry the one who returns when the Civil War breaks out. On the battlefield, Remington is wounded and left for dead, and Buck returns to marry her. Shortly afterward, Remington returns and contents himself with becoming one of the Hineman family. Years pass and Buck's daughter Luzelle finds herself wooed by two young men, Philip Burwood and Boyd Savely, whose families have been enemies for years. Luzelle's rejected suitor, Boyd, robs the Hineman bank, opens the strongbox containing Mrs. Hineman's papers and tampers with a letter written to her years before congratulating her on the birth of her daughter. The letter, sent to General Buck Hineman on the occasion of his daughter's marriage to Philip, gives the impression by the obliteration of a word that Remington is Luzelle's father. The wedding is halted and a duel between the two old men arranged. Each shoots in the air and realizes that neither wants to kill the other. Soon after, the robbery is discovered and the two old friends are reconciled.
