In early 1864, the most ferocious of the Confederate raider generals, John Hunt Morgan, was mysteriously preparing his last strike back into his home state of Kentucky. The little crossroads town of Mt. Sterling was his primary target. This unexplained raid may have had more than just limited military objectives. It may have been part of a larger plot to change the course of the War and of US history.
The South was reeling from the twin impacts of military defeats and financial chaos. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the government and within the military. Presidential elections were near in the Union. Many thought that a different Union president could end the war on terms favorable to the South. Some thought that a different President of the Confederacy could better pursue the war. In the middle of this turmoil, conspiracies were rampant on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.
At about the same time, only 155 years later, a college history teacher in Atlanta and an engineer in Dallas, two graduates of Mt. Sterling High School, are preparing to attend their 50th high school reunion in Kentucky. They had been lovers in high school and college, but now live very separate lives – one as a renowned historian and the other as a globe-hopping petroleum engineer. Old feelings are stirred when each finds that the other is going to attend the reunion. Will the 'time-machine magic' of a high school reunion bring them back together? How will the classmates going to their reunion 145 years later interact with the events that transpired during the Civil War in their hometown?
General John Hunt Morgan's cavalry raid resulted in the robbery of a bank in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. The exact amount stolen is unclear, but it appears to have been between $60,000 and $80,000, a fortune at the time. Although there was a civil trial and a court marshal filed (against two unrelated people), it was never determined who was responsible for the theft. None of the money was ever recovered. There are many hypotheses as to what happened on that June day in 1864, but most are conflicting and none has been substantiated. Why did Morgan leave his guard assignment of strategic mines in Virginia to launch the raid without orders? Was this robbery in General John Bell Hood's hometown, where he and his family were very influential, a part of a larger plot, perhaps to overthrow President Jeff Davis? Was Hood, himself, involved through secret operatives? Was a much larger sum of money involved that could have financed a revolt within the revolution?
In "The Treasure of the Mount," these storylines are intertwined with a mix of the nostalgia and memories of a small-town high school reunion and the desperation of the later years of the American Civil War in a style similar to Harry Turtledove's and/or Bram Stoker's.
The plot continues with double agents involved in the robbery having vastly different and hidden agenda. One group is trying to help finance a take-over of the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis, while the main protagonist in the story, is helping hide the movement of a fortune that drafts the amount actually stolen from the bank.
The present-day heroes of the book, Alice and Sam, become involved in a search for the lost bank proceeds while attending their high-school reunion in Mt. Sterling, and stumble on the larger plots that were really behind the bank robbery.