The trilogy tells a story of America's War for Independence in the South: the people who fought and won, and those who fought and lost. is Book One of the trilogy. Fiona Cassidy, a fourteen-year-old Irish immigrant, arrives in the American South in 1750, indentured to a wealthy plantation owner in Charlestown, South Carolina. Will Gordon, a survivor of the infamous Battle of Culloden in Scotland's Highlands, makes his way to the New World arriving by ship into the port of Wilmington, North Carolina. Together, they are thrust directly into the struggle for American independence, specifically into the Southern conflicts. They encounter Cherokee Indians and Catawba Indians as well as the British and Tories as they make their lives in the Southern Appalachians. She brings with her the Irish fiddle music that has become an Appalachian music tradition. is a saga of strength and courage as Fiona and Will and their families encounter the complex and often horrifying reality of life on the early frontier of the Carolinas. It explores both sides of the conflicts between settlers and natives, between Tories and Patriots, even between neighbors. It is a Southern tale of the fight for American independence not often told by historians.