What if a secret society, founded during the Civil War, accumulated a fortune in gold coins in the hopes of someday funding a second war between the states? What if they buried their treasure in a vast network of remote locations across the South and the Southwestern United States, and appointed sentinels to guard them -- sentinels who passed the secrets of this treasure from generation to generation? What if the keys to this fantastic treasure were hidden in a series of mysterious coded maps?

In Rebel Gold, investigative journalist Warren Getler and Bob Brewer, a descendant of...