Redeemed by Blood

The idyllic life of young Dade Green in Mississippi abruptly changes with the death of his parents and advent of the Civil War. He is compelled by his uncle to enroll in Virginia Military Institute and becomes caught up in the Civil War even though his slave is his best friend. Desperate for money, he must sell his slave, Ebenezer, and later by happenstance meets up with him, only to witness his horrible death. Dade loses a leg during the war and endures an abusive treatment at the Union prison camp at Ft. Delaware, but survives, marries, and bears several children. As if in recapitulation of wartime horrors and Dade's ambivalence about slavery, his son, Ellis Paul, becomes involved with the KKK. Another black man meets an appalling death, and his killers go unpunished. Dade dies with guilt so terrible that his ghost haunts the family, and his old home for several generations. Attempts at exorcism fail, until his "sins" are redeemed and his soul released by a transforming event involving his great-great-great grandson.