The Bushwhacker: A Civil War Adventure

During the Civil War, fourteen-year-old Jacob Knight returns from the cornfield one day to find bushwhackers Confederate sympathizers in the Union state of Missouri terrorizing his family. At the insistence of his mother, Jacob and his seven-year-old sister, Eliza, flee the house for safety. When the two young people dare to return home the following morning, their family is nowhere to be found and their home is burnt to the ground. Hoping that the rest of their family survived, Jacob and Eliza take the family's one remaining horse and journey north, toward their aunt's home in Iowa in hopes of finding their family along the way. After traveling for several days, the children are befriended and given shelter by a kind young mother, Maggie, who was left by her husband, a bushwhacker. The children stay with Maggie throughout the winter, helping her with the farm chores, and with her infant son. The new family is growing comfortable with each other until a ragged stranger enters their.