"In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down. Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty thanks to his slight stature, youthful appearance, and utter lack of compunction about bending the truth. But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, Simon finds himself conscripted, however belatedly, into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position...

"Meet Tony: insatiably curious, deeply compassionate, with a unique perspective on every scene he encounters. Kidnapped and transported to the New World after traveling from the British East India Company's outpost on the Coromandel Coast to the teeming streets of London, young Tony finds himself in Jamestown, Virginia, where he and his fellow indentured servants--boys like himself, men from Africa, a mad woman from London--must work the tobacco plantations....

After cheating the hangman twice--once after the Battle of Culloden in Scotland and again at Marshalsea Prison--Jamie MacGillivray is sentenced to indentured servitude in colonial America where he teams up with a poor village girl similarly sentenced through serfdom, revolt, escape, and romantic entanglements. Scotland. In 1746, at the Battle of Culloden, Jamie MacGillivray, narrowly escapes a roadside execution only to be recaptured by the victors...