In the Civil War, a stockyard owner forces an immigrant worker to take the place of his ne’er-do-well son. The immigrant, embittered by war and personal injustices, vows revenge, and the result is murder. The stockyard magnate, meanwhile, sends the son on a journey that changes him for the better, even as his immigrant counterpart has changed for the worse. Our reformed man confronts the ravaged South, finds love, fights his personal demons, and pursues the one person he wants to blame, and the one who blames him.

Primary time period: April-June 1865

Principal Players

Merritt Moran: Barron’s worthless son
Patek Tulák: Czech immigrant
Mariel: Julian’s Cuban domestic
Barron Moran: King of cattle empire based at Chicago stockyards
Julian Moran: Merritt’s brother. Runs the cattle ranch in Florida
Isaac: Technically, Julian’s slave, but essentially the ranch’s foreman
Jiri: Patek’s cousin and co-worker, who preceded him to America

The U.S. Civil War left half of America in ruins. And its scars have yet to heal. Even today, more than a century and a half later, any discussion of it quickly leads to the same divergent talking points as in 1860.
But while total agreement never will be reached as to which side was right, this much is beyond debate: the Civil War was the greatest catastrophe, the greatest tragedy, the greatest failure in the history of the world’s greatest democracy. A nation that proudly rules by law over anarchy, by the vote over the gun, by compromise over coup, could not find a way to resolve what was, admittedly, an onerous and complicated dispute, without burning many of its great cities, tearing up its infrastructure, demolishing its economy, and – most tragically – calling on a generation of young men to stand calmly in long orderly lines and literally shoot each others’ brains out.
No event in U.S. history has received more attention. University of Virginia professor Gary W. Gallagher estimated more than 50,000 books and pamphlets have been published about it, a rate of one title a day since the guns fired at Fort Sumter.
And yet, no theater has been ignored by the national consciousness as much as has Florida. Well, not in Florida. Nearly one in ten of the estimated 1,000 articles in the century-plus history of the Florida Historical Quarterly is about the war and Reconstruction.
Today, Florida, filled with northern transplants and immigrants from across the world, is by far the least southern part of the South. In 1860 it was the smallest of the eleven Confederate states, with 140,000 residents. Only a few thousand lived in its peninsula, now home to millions. Northern newspapers called it "the smallest tadpole in the dirty pool of secession.”
Nevertheless, Florida had a major role in the war. Fort Pickens, near Pensacola, nearly was the site of the first shots. Florida accounted for nearly half of the Confederacy’s coastline, and thus much of the blockade. Rife with loyalists, and home to federal installations that never were abandoned, it was the state Abraham Lincoln hoped to draw back to the fold first, leading to the famous battle of Olustee, featured in this tale.
Most importantly, it became by the end of the war what Florida Institute of Technology professor Robert Taylor calls the “rebel storehouse” in his book by the same name. The fall of Vicksburg cut off the staggering Confederacy from Louisiana, Arkansas, and – most critically – Texas. It turned to Florida. And soon sucked it dry of its resources. Of all states in rebellion, only Virginia suffered more financially.
That started a cycle in which Florida suffers staggering debt, tourism surges and state leaders conclude it would be even better to persuade people to move to Florida – which they do, en masse. It happened again at the turn of the 20th century, leading to the great real estate boom, and in World War II, when Florida’s population was only two million. It’s now more than 23 million. And all of it can be traced to the Civil War.