The Shadow Appears: Book 1 in the Devil's Shadow Series

In March of 1865, three months after being wounded, Confederate Captain Robert Hester awakens in a Richmond hospital. As one of Major Mosby's Rangers, the Union Army considers him an outlaw He has a bounty on his head. As Petersburg falls to the Yankees and Richmond's fall is inevitable, Mosby convinces General Lee to reassign Hester so he can't be taken from the hospital and hanged. Hester's new orders are to assist in guarding President Davis and the Confederate Treasury as Davis and the Treasury evacuate Richmond.

When Davis stops in Danville, Virginia, Captain Hester and his sergeant Josiah Turley decide to ride out to the east to determine if there are Yankee forces there. Being so near his family home, Captain Hester decides to visit his family for the first time in four years--maybe the last time. Nearing his family home, they watch as Yankee bummers kill his family and burn his home. He sees his father, his sister, his bride-to-be and Aunt Callie (the Black woman who raised him and his sister after their mother's death) all killed by the bummers.

Fueled by grief and rage, Hester vows vengeance. In a vain attempt to reunite with Davis, they ride through the South, witnessing the destruction and devastation. When Davis is captured, they set their sights on Texas to join with General Kirby Smith's Trans-Mississippi army. Together, Hester and Turley navigate a war-torn South and confront loss, moral ambiguity, and the cost of an unrelenting thirst for revenge.

After Kirby Smith's surrender, Hester turns his horse toward Mexico to join Jo Shelby to rebuild a Southern army and continue the fight for the Lost Cause.

The War had taken everything he valued from him. He had lost his home. His family. His cause. And his only reason for living now was vengeance. All he had left were his horses, his guns and his sense of honor. So, he pointed his horse toward war-torn Mexico. To find his old life. Or a new one. Or to die with neither. He didn't think he cared which of the three he found.