One spring day, Jacob finds a Union soldier in his family's barn. The Civil War was fought long, long ago, but the soldier has come back, just as the Spring Rider—a long, thin man with a stovepipe hat on a too-small horse—does every year. The soldier has come to fight the war again, and with his bugle he calls the spirits of soldiers, Union and Confederate, to the battle. Jacob wants to be a part of the battle too, and with the dashing, heroic Confederate Colonel Ashby he rides the countryside, reliving the excitement and danger of the Civil War. Gray, Jacob's sister, is sixteen and pretty. She waits for the man who will fall in love with her, but first she meets the Spring Rider—a wise, sad Abraham Lincoln, who has come to stop the fighting once and for all. He is searching for Hannibal, the soldier with the bugle—the soldier who has the power to call "good night" to the battle. But Hannibal meets Gray, and the Spring Rider's plan to put the war to rest becomes complicated by Hannibal's love for Gray. The living, though, cannot share life with the dead, and they all know that a choice must be made. The yearnings for love, for peace, and for victory are made real as their symbols slip in and out of the shadows of the Virginia countryside, in John Lawson's hauntingly beautiful book.