The battle between teenage twins, Arky and Iris, is about to explode into war-the Civil War. Arky is ready to give up on rescuing their mother, Dr. Octavia Jongler, who is lost in the past. Iris refuses to give up hope, and playing the Jongler cor anglais to reawaken its powers of time travel. When Arky's buddy, Danny, a pitching ace, throws his baseball future away, Iris and the cor anglais perform a shocking double blowback. Danny and Arky are blown to a time and place, 1863, where a boy's game was being played in the middle of a man's war. (True story ) While Danny is thrust into a world of baseball he never imagined, Arky discovers tantalizing clues that put him on the trail of his missing mom. In the present, Iris's quest to bring everyone home from 1863 leads to a risky game of cat-and-mouse with Matt Grinnell, her first victim and beneficiary of time travel.

The war that spans centuries-between brother and sister, pitcher and batter, blue and gray, love and loss-is fought to the last page.