[4] The novel portrays the teenage boy Lacy Gore Buchan and his military family in rural Fairfax County, Virginia, before and at the start of the American Civil War.

[5] Kirkus Reviews wrote that Tate successfully used his experience from writing biographies and literary criticism to create a sense of authentic conflict and drama, portraying his characters' morals and loyalties with "vitality and robustness".

[1] Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post wrote in 2006 that the book was largely forgotten outside of university courses in Southern literature, which he called an injustice.

He compared it favorably to Gone with the Wind, praised "its muscular prose and its exceptionally believable characters" and called it intricate but easy to read.

[5] The scholar John W. Crowley wrote in The Sewanee Review in 2011 that the novel benefits from repeated readings and that it had kept growing over the more than 40 years he had taught classes on it.