Steven Armour is a man at a crossroad: his rise up the career ladder has slowed to a crawl, and his family is slipping out of control. But life takes a dramatic turn for Steven when, on a whim, he joins a local group of Civil War re-enactors. Assigned to immerse himself in the life of Private John Trow, Steven soon finds that his weekends at the living history village on Connecticut's Mt. Riga let him escape his everyday disappointments. The complex drills of the Union army seem to come to him naturally, the men of the regiment become his friends, and his growing infatuation with Polly Kellogg, the wife of the regiment's captain, fires a passion that had cooled with his own wife. While the world around him races faster and faster toward the millennium, Steven turns to the simple consolations of nineteenth-century life, a choice that, strangely enough, starts to straighten out both his family and his job. But so thoroughly does Steven embrace the life of John Trow that even Steven begins to wonder if he is just playing a part, or whether the unquiet spirit of John Trow is taking him over. As Steven's identity slips through his fingers, he must ask himself what - and who - he is willing to sacrifice to become the man he believes he should have been.