After his wounding at Bull Run (Faded Coat of Blue, 1999) and his bout of typhoid, Welsh-born Captain Abel Jones is dispatched by Secretary of State Seward to New York’s Finger Lakes region, apparently as far from the bloody theater of the Civil War as he can imagine. But his warrant to investigate rumors of an Irish insurrection in what ought to be one of President Lincoln’s strongholds led to his predecessor’s death, and threatens him as well with the violence Parry tracks from battlefields to back alleys.