Boggs chronicles one of the more painful episodes of the Civil War: the border violence between Southern-sympathizing Missouri bushwhackers and Union-sympathizing Kansas jayhawkers. Staggering home from the Battle of Wilsonʼs Creek, two teenagers, Alistair Durant and Beans Kimbrough, become inseparable friends. Left to their own devices, they might go back to farming in Clay County (near Kansas City), but redlegs (irregular Missouri Unionists) terrorize their families, and pretty soon the boys find themselves riding with Frank James, Cole Younger, “Bloody” Bill Anderson, and William Quantrill.