Home is where the heart is... it's our connection to the past, a place in which to build a future, the only place to run when the world is falling down around us.... To Livie Harrington, Bliss, the grand mansion on the shores of North Carolina's Albemarle Sound, is everything. It's a house comprised of memories, the last remaining link to her past. In a life shattered by the Civil War, Bliss becomes Livie's anchor, the driving force behind her desperate attempt to rebuild a family fortune. She's lost her parents, her only love, and her brother is fighting somewhere to the north. She can't bear to lose Bliss, too... but what's a girl to do... besides the most outlandish, most lucrative profession to arise from the Federal blockade? Everything is going well for Livie when a desperate driving need to go home invades her busy life. A need she can't ignore. A terrible, devastating dream. Yet, waiting for Livie is a houseful of trouble. Her dying brother, and the man who risked everything to grant his last wish, to allow him to breathe his last at Bliss... the lover Livie thought never to see again. Adam Calendar took an innocent girl and made her his secret bride. Then, after a single night of passion, he left her to fight in a war he didn't believe in. Now, he's back.... a deserter from the Union army, a man with a price on his head, hated by both Blue and Gray--and by Livie, the woman he loved and left....