Tubman Command

Spring 1863 finds the Union Army reeling after its heavy losses at Chancellorsville. Fort Sumter, the symbol of the Confederacy that the navy cannot seem to subdue, still bristles with guns and underwater mines. In Beaufort, South Carolina, Harriet Tubman, known to the Confederates as a fugitive they are desperate to capture and to the enslaved as "Moses," is working out a bold scheme. Her aim is to slip behind enemy lines, free hundreds of enslaved people, and enlist them as soldiers. She has already given up her husband and her home, and a price is on her head.

The novel focuses on Tubman at the peak of her abilities, as she prepares what becomes the largest plantation raid of the Civil War. General David Hunter puts her in command of a team of Black scouts, though he doubts that one woman can achieve much. To make her gamble pay off, Tubman has to get around alligators, overseers, slave catchers, sharpshooters, and Union soldiers who are not on her side, and guide gunboats up the Combahee River. Opposition comes from many men at every turn, yet one of them reminds her that freedom should not demand that she give up love.