COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1865: The city has fallen to the onslaught of three Yankee armies commanded by the infamous William Tecumseh Sherman. WHEN Union cavalryman Tupper Long finds the horribly mutilated corpses of a Kentucky regiment, he knows who did it and why. BUT LONG doesn't know the whole story. To see justice done, General Sherman turns to Ced Buckley, a peg-legged former Confederate soldier who has dedicated his life to the Rule of Saint Benedict--and to crime detection. BROTHER BUCKLEY'S investigation follows a bloody trail of senseless murders, reforms a trans-Atlantic slaver...