In the summer of 1863, Judson Walker, a captain of Morgan's Raiders, and Jonathan Reid, a young engineer, come to Furnass to appropriate two of Colin Lyles' steam-powered road engines. The purpose is to outfit the engines with iron plate and the newly developed Gatlin Guns, and, with Morgan, deliver the war engines to General Lee's army in Central Pennsylvania. Amid Walker's growing involvement with Lyle's wife Libby, deserting soldiers, and Reid's own agenda, Walker learns Morgan isn't coming. The novel reaches its climax with Lyle trying to sabotage the war engines. Walker must decide between Libby and duty toward his men, the war and individual human values.

The Books of Furnass tell the story of a fictitious mill town, ten miles from Pittsburgh in southwestern Pennsylvania. At the heart of the series is the Furnass Towers Trilogy, about the efforts of men and women to maintain their lives, and the life of the town, in the face of the mill closings. In addition to contemporary life, the series chronicles the town when it was just an outpost after the French and Indian War...the town as it grew around an iron furnace in the wilderness...as it became an industrial center from the time of the American Civil War to the Vietnam War. And the series tells the story of the Lyle family, who were involved with the town from its founding to its struggles to survive after the mills went away.