This novel plunges the reader into the last agonizing years of the Civil War. Cattle from the Florida plains are needed to save a desperate South from starvation. But quicksand and snake-filled swamps, Yankee raiders, and vicious outlaws block the trails between Florida and the rest of the Confederacy. Men like Tree Hooker, tough as alligator hide and quick with gun, knife, or whip, reckon with Union forces and renegades when they take on the job of driving the herds.