A farmer by the name of Joshua Quark volunteered to join the Union Army shortly after the Confederate gunners seized Fort Sumter. That man was real, and the book's author assumed the identity of Mr. Quark during the decade that he was himself a Civil War re-enactor. The book follows Quark's imagined pre-war life, his three years of service with the Indiana 15th Infantry and his return to civilian status. The book also is a murder mystery based upon the killing of a thoroughly disliked sergeant.