In this richly imagined, utterly original debut a mother- daughter road trip leads a young girl--a precocious Civil War buff--to a hard-won understanding of the American history she loves and the personal history she inherits.

Eleven-year-old Katherine McConnell is so immersed in Civil War history that she often imagines herself a general, leading troops to battle. When Kat's beautiful, impulsive mother wakes her early one morning in the summer of 1968 to tell her they will be taking a road trip from Georgia to Maine to find antiques for a shop she wants to open, Kat sees the opportunity...