The Civil War has broken out in Missouri and Lettie Worthington won’t take sides–though she has a brother fighting in each army and a fiancé' with a guerrilla band sympathetic to the South. Not involved in the conflict, Lettie deals with her own struggles and hardships at home, and with the help of former slaves, she saves her family’s hemp and tobacco farm. Upon learning that both brothers were in the Battle of Lexington, twenty miles west, she leaves the farm and paddles a skiff up the Missouri River to find them.

Lettie is surrounded by enemies. She has just buried her brothers from opposite sides in the Battle of Lexington, Missouri, in September 1861. The Union sergeant believes all Missourians are enemies and especially Lettie, since Wolfe, her fiancé, rides with a bushwhacker gang working for the Confederacy. Her neighbors with southern sympathies hate her because she freed her slaves and shares with them her hemp and tobacco harvests. As if all that isn t trouble enough, the head of the bushwhacker gang plans to kidnap her workers and sell them back into slavery. Lettie, Wolfe, and the freed slaves strive to save the family farm and survive the many enemies.