Down the road a person goes early on a friday morning. He is dressed in a blue woolen uniform that is getting rather warm in the summer air. He stops for gasoline and is asked if he is going to be in a movie. He replies, "That he is off to fight the 133rd battle of Valle Verde." This man is known as a Civil War reenactor and lives for this adventure no matter where the location and state. This is a very fast growing hobby and hundreds make up the fighting men and while thousands of people watch and get thrilled.

The novel is set at a prison camp where the inmates are allowed to go into town to work and earn money. At the start the camp is calm and collected. Then a man was sent to the camp as a punishment for wrongs he did and turned the whole camp upside down. The captain tried to stand up for his men and the inmates but was told as a warden he did not need a captain who was in his mind nothing but a figure head. Then this warden left under strange circumstances and the older man that should have been dismissed a lot earlier, all the warden's took pity on him, and kept him around. His first...