Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and childhood playmates are no longer children. The rangy, even-tempered Norman Scottish Hamilton is smitten with Sarah who has become an enticing capricious beauty - the young lovers more in love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them.

Against this rustic idyll of hard work and gracious living comes inflexible discord and divided loyalties that mutilate ties of blood and bond, tearing at their lives as smoke and battle no longer so faraway crashes and maims ever closer. Ahead of the on-coming ranks of Blue, foragers and bumlers burn, loot, scavenge and kill. Hamilton faces agonizing sacrifices with dreadful consequences. With little else than his wits, he tries anything to protect Sarah, their unborn child, his sickly father, and Sarah's family.