Rory Calhoun

Tom Bates has returned to Jordan, Ohio, after 18 years, rekindling the gossip that he fathered an illegitimate baby before he left. Mary Hagen, the now-grown subject of those rumors, soon finds herself an unwitting target for the town's malicious whispers and lies. So when her mother dies without explaining her past, a tormented Mary turns to Tom for the truth about a scandal that ruined her life before it ever began.

Epic story covering a period in U.S. history from John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry in 1859 to the summer of 1865 following President Lincoln's death. Focuses on two related families living on either side of the Mason-Dixon line who find themselves at war with each other.